


Belladonna

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Monsters, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-11 04:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11706936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: Ian is a monster-hunter contracted by local villagers to kill a wyvern. Mickey is a witch who doesn't appreciate monster-hunters killing his neighbors.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pretty generic fantasy setting, though based mostly on the world/aesthetics of the Witcher games - as evidenced by my shamelessly stealing from the Witcher bestiary. So long and thanks for all the kikimores.

It’s not until the wyvern attacks three nights in a row that the villagers reluctantly seek out Ian and offer him the contract. 

Ian is sitting on a wooden chair that he made himself, in front of his small stone house, sliding a whetstone slowly down the length of his longsword’s blade. His fingers are glistening with oil and his brow is furrowed in deep concentration. His skin is very pale and lightly freckled, exposed where his sleeves are rolled up, and his hair is a bright reddish-orange. He looks nothing like the rest of the villagers, with their uniformly brown hair and ruddy cheeks. No one really knows where he came from. All they know is that he hunts monsters, and they sorely need a monster-hunter.

He looks up when they approach - a delegation of three women wearing grim expressions and worn clothes. Ian’s shrewd green eyes immediately land on the leather coin pouch attached to the leader’s belt. He does his best to conceal a smirk as he carefully sets his sword down and wipes his hands off on an old rag.

“Finally decided to do something about your wyvern problem, huh?” he says, by way of greeting.

Fiona - the leader by dint of her household owning the most farmland in the area - extends a hand brusquely, and grudgingly appreciates the businesslike manner in which Ian completes the handshake. “It could take a child next,” she says. “The villagers are afraid it will burn down their houses while they sleep.”

“Wyverns don’t breathe fire,” Ian counters, smirking slightly.

Fiona clenches her jaw and prays for patience. “I know that,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. “But the villagers are frightened, and superstitious. Many of them think that wyverns are just young dragons.”

Ian scoffs.

“Half up front,” Fiona says, untying the leather pouch from her belt. “To buy whatever supplies you may need. The other half when you bring me the fucker’s head.”

She tosses the coin pouch to the monster-hunter, who snatches it out of the air with practised ease. He weighs it skeptically in his palm. “Little light," he comments.

“It’s all we could do.”

“This isn’t a pay-what-you-can service. I have fixed rates.”

“And if the wyvern starves us all to death, you’ll have no customers.”

Ian raises his eyebrows and tilts his head - a concession. He considers the offer for a moment and then says, “Throw in a horse and you’ve got a deal.”

Fiona stares him down, unblinking. “I’ll loan you a horse. I’ll expect it back when the job is done.”

For a moment it seems as though Ian will argue this point, but then he simply shrugs and says, “It’ll probably be killed anyway.”

Bastard. Fiona wouldn’t put it past him to set the horse free, or kill it himself, just to spite her. Still, if they do nothing the wyvern could come for their horses next. She holds out her hand again and spits into the palm. Ian does the same, and they shake. The deal is struck.

* * *

Local wisdom dictates that the woods are safe for foraging and hunting for about two miles inwards from the treeline. This area is threaded through with clear pathways, with elevated hunting platforms dotted among the higher branches of the trees, and deeply carved markings on the trunks below that can direct a wanderer back to the village even in pitch darkness.

Beyond those first couple of miles, however, the woods get weird.

Villagers have tried extending the pathways and tree markers, only to come back the next day and find their paths buried under weeds and thorns, and the tree trunks mysteriously restored. The farther out you go, the sharper and thicker and closer the overhead branches get, until they force even those of average height to duck under them in order to continue. Firesides are thick with whispers of people who went too far into the woods and never returned. Hunters say they have heard strange gibbering and howling in the distance at night. There are no maps of the deep woods. Some say they are impossible to map.

Ian isn’t afraid. This is not his first time in the deep woods. When the branches crowd in low he climbs down from his horse - a sturdy animal with fringes of long, white hair covering its hooves - and carefully guides it across the perilous terrain.

The monster-hunter is wearing light leather armor and no helmet. It will leave him vulnerable, but not nearly as vulnerable as he would be if he cut off his peripheral vision and weighed himself down with 50 pounds of metal. His longsword is slung across his back, and a bow and quiver of arrows hang from his horse’s saddle. Ian plans to fire an arrow tipped with a lambskin bag of spices directly into the wyvern’s eyes, blinding it so that it will be afraid to take flight, and then move in and slay it with his sword. It’s an easy job, really. If anything, he over-charged the villagers for it.

As if they were only testing his mettle, the branches overhead soon thin out again and rise upwards so that Ian no longer has to duck. The ground underfoot is soft and mossy, and Ian can hear the faint hum and chatter of the woods’ denizens - pixies and elementals, drowners and kikimores - reacting anxiously to his presence. Those who can’t sense his wards can smell the blood soaked into his armor, and they all give Ian a wide berth.

The wyvern’s nest is at the center of a small clearing. The creature is curled up on a hollow mess of bones and branches and moss, and as Ian climbs into the low branches of a tree to get a better look, he immediately notes two things.

The wyvern is a female, and she’s incubating a clutch of eggs.

A slow grin spreads across Ian’s face. He knows the price that wyvern eggs will fetch if he can get them to the nearest city. The eggs are dormant when away from the presence of a parent, and the wealthy like to display them on mantels and side tables as artifacts of curiosity. Never mind getting short-changed for killing the wyvern - Ian could get rich selling those eggs.

With great care and slow, even breaths, Ian nocks an arrow loaded with the precious cargo of blinding powders at the tip. Knowing the extra weight will drag it down, he aims deliberately high, mentally picturing the arc of the arrow. It’s a tricky shot, but Ian doesn’t doubt himself.

He does pause, though, when he hears a new sound on the air. It’s faint - too quiet for Ian to make out the words - and very clearly a male voice. Ian frowns as he recognizes the rhythms and cadences of an incantation. Then the lambskin pouch at his arrow tip explodes with sudden violence - flinging the burning spices directly into Ian’s face before he has a chance to close his eyes.

The pain is near-immediate, and agonizing. Ian keeps enough of his wits about him that he doesn’t try rubbing his eyes, but the sudden blindness and pain panics him. He tries and fails to bite down on a yelp of shock, and his delicate balance on the branch betrays him. Ian tumbles off and crashes heavily to the ground, his head rebounding off a moss-covered rock. The last thing he hears is his horse’s frightened whinny, and then he hears nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

Mickey’s house is near-impossible to find for anyone he doesn’t want visiting him. That includes pretty much everyone.

Mandy, one of the very few exceptions, arrives in the woods shortly after midday via a hidden portal in the ruins of a church. The forest welcomes her like an old friend; roots flatten themselves so as not to trip her, and the trees brush her cheeks with the delicate petals of their blossoms, like a kiss. She brushes her fingertips over the bark of the tree trunks and feels the energy thrumming through him. Mandy envies Mickey, surrounded by all this, while she scrapes a living in the cacophony and pollution of the city.

His home is more like a hut than a house, really. The trees open up to find it standing in a small clearing of its own, with a pen for the goats off to the side of the building and a large garden teeming with flowers and herbs. The building is comprised of grey stones held together by sheer geometry infused with a little willpower. It’s steady as a rock, but looks like it could fall down at any moment.

Mandy stops just outside the gate. Mickey is her brother, but she knows better than to barge into his home without being greeted first. 

“Hey assface,” she hollers over the fence. “I’m getting old out here.”

Silence. Then, a bout of muffled swearing from inside the hut. Then the wooden front door bursts open and Mickey stomps out, completely naked save for a leather apron. He has a smear of soot over his left eyebrow, which is pulled towards its twin in a long-suffering glower.

“You keep joking about that shit, it’s gonna come true,” he yells back.

Mandy grins. Her real age is in the triple digits, but she still looks like a 19 year-old. “Can I come in or what?” she asks.

Mickey shrugs laconically and waves his hand, temporarily disarming the wards that surround his home. He turns his back, presenting her with an entirely unsolicited view of his pale ass, and saunters back into the house.

Before following him inside, Mandy stops by the goat pen and scratches the bristly hair on their heads. She carefully sorts through the plants in Mickey’s garden until she finds a herb that aids digestion in goats, and feeds them a few leaves apiece. Afterwards, she stops to greet the cat sitting on the stone pathway leading up to Mickey’s door, but it tosses its head away irritably and stalks off.

Fortunately, by the time Mandy heads into the house, Mickey has swapped his leather apron for a pair of breeches and a roughspun woollen shirt. The kettle is hanging over the fireplace, and Mickey is moodily mashing a mix of tea leaves and herbs into the teapot’s strainer.

“How’s the wyvern?” Mandy asks.

“Eggs should hatch in a couple more weeks. Once they leave the nest, she’ll move on and find a new mate. You still good to relocate the young ones?”

There’s an edge to his voice that Mandy recognizes. Mickey is tired, and stressed. “Sure. Got a nice spot in the mountains picked out.” She pauses, then asks carefully, “There a problem?”

“Fuckin’ villagers,” Mickey spits, glaring darkly in the vague direction of civilization. “They lose a couple o’ sheep and they send in a goddamn monster-hunter to kill it. Doesn’t fuckin’ occur to them to build stronger barns, or hire a witch to put up some wards. Morons.” 

He mutters a quick protection spell as he reaches for the cast-iron handle of the now-boiling teapot and lifts it off the hook above the fire. If he were an ordinary person he would be screaming in agony, but the kettle only gently warms his fingers. Secretly, Mandy envies the ease with which her brother wields magic off-the-cuff. She’s better than him at mixing potions, but he’s much more adept at casting spells.

Just as they’re drinking their first sips of tea, there’s a loud clatter over by the window. Mandy glances over her shoulder just in time to see the cat thudding clumsily to the floor.

“That’s new,” Mandy comments, instinctively reaching out and rubbing her thumb and forefinger together to try and coax the cat closer. It ignores her and hunches down on the hay-strewn floor, glaring at them both.

“Familiar,” Mickey grunts. “Maybe.”

Mandy raises an eyebrow and looks a little closer at the cat. It’s a ginger tabby cat, with bright green eyes and an amulet on a leather collar around its neck. “Demon?” she ventures.

Mickey shakes his head, swallowing a mouthful of tea. “I wish. It’s just a human. Shape-shifted.”

Mandy clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “Enslaving humans is more trouble than it’s worth. Almost always ends up with angry family members on the doorstep.”

“Yeah, well, this one had it coming.”

They’ve been siblings for a long, long time - long enough that Mandy recognizes this particular note of venom in Mickey’s voice and puts two and two together. “Ah. So this is the would-be wyvern-killer?” 

Mickey  _ hates  _ monster-hunters. 

“Yeah, that’s the bitch,” he says, looking down at the cat witheringly. “Least if he’s here, I can keep an eye on him. He’s been useful for fuck-all so far, though. Doesn’t even kill rats.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to offer him a contract,” Mandy suggests wryly. 

Her brother grins at her, his mood lightened a little.

* * *

Here’s the thing about familiars: they’re supposed to make your life easier.

The cat does not make Mickey’s life easier.

It pisses on the floor of his hut. It yowls obnoxiously in the middle of the night and wakes him up. It scampers madly around his house, knocking things over. One morning he goes outside and finds that the little bastard has dug up a dozen of his lovingly-grown herbs and laid them out on his doorstep in a neat line. As Mickey looks down at the wreckage, thinking of all the hours he spent carefully nurturing these plants, the cat sits on the pathway staring at him smugly, swishing its tail from side to side.

Mickey squares his shoulders, blows out a long breath through his nose, and then suddenly bears down on the cat. It scrambles, trying to flee, but he grabs it by the scruff of its neck, picks it up and hurls it into the goat pen. The goats startle and lower their horns, and the cat has to make a mad dash to avoid being gored. It slinks away sulkily and sits on the edge of the small pond where Mickey breeds toads.

For a while, Mickey considers putting protection spells on his garden and his animals, but his sense of pride won’t allow him to make such concessions in his own domain. He trusts that fear will keep his new servant in line until it’s willing to cooperate, and for a while it seems as though he might be right. The attacks on his garden stop, and his goats and toads remain unharmed.

Mickey starts to let his guard down. 

This nearly gets him killed.

He’s mixing a new batch of a potion that he drinks to maintain his health. It’s barely magical, really - just a concoction of herbs and roots that will nourish his body and mind. He’s just about to add the final ingredient (dried mint, for flavor) when a shiver runs up his spine - a warning that something isn’t right. Mickey frowns and sniffs the air, picking up a nasty, acrid scent. He looks down into the jar and notices a lack of uniformity about its contents.

The cat freezes when Mickey bursts out of the hut, its eyes darting around, searching for a means of escape. Mickey doesn’t grab it this time, though. He folds his arms and fixes the creature with a dangerous glare.

“Deadly nightshade?” he says in a cold, hard voice. “Are you _ fucking _ kidding me? I’m a witch, you think I can’t tell the difference between mint and deadly nightshade?”

The cat crouches down low, its ears flattened against its head and all of its fur sticking up on end. Mickey hears it hissing - quietly, but with clear defiance.

“You know the only reason I ain’t killed you yet is ‘cause I turned you into a cat?” Mickey continues, taking a threatening step forward. “I don’t like hurting animals. But so help me, I will put you in a fucking sack full of rocks and throw you in a river if you keep pushing me.”

He takes another step forward, then crouches down, towering over the hunched shape of the cat.

“You think this is my first time?” he asks, mockingly. “You know how many familiars I’ve had? Let me tell you from experience, this only goes one of two ways. You either end up dead, or you serve me until I decide to let you go. That’s it.”

The cat hisses loudly this time, showing Mickey every one of its sharp white teeth, glaring at him with green eyes full of hatred. In return, Mickey shows it every single one of  _ his _ teeth - bared in a broad, humorless grin.

“Oh, you think you got it bad now? I’ve been nice to you so far. It can get much, much worse than this. Just try me.”

The cat considers him for a long moment. The fur on its back flattens, and its ears slowly lift up from its head. Mickey is just starting to calm down when the cat suddenly lashes out, swiping its claws across his cheek and drawing blood in three perfectly straight lines.

* * *

Mandy comes to visit Mickey again a week later, to check on the wyvern’s progress and swap stories over the fire. She glances over at the table that Mickey uses for preparing potion ingredients and raises an eyebrow. “New familiar already?” she asks.

Mickey shakes his head. “Nah. Same familiar, new look.”

They settle down for a meal of vegetable stew, chatting animatedly. Over on the table, the fat orange toad lowers its head onto its horny front feet and watches them in miserable silence.


	3. Chapter 3

Ian is huddled under a bush in the garden, staring out glumly at the trees beyond the gate. He had tried to take a dip in the pond to cool off, but the other toads had bullied him away. This is what his life has been reduced to: being bullied by toads.

The amulet hangs heavy around his squat neck. Ian has tried to remove the collar - first by scratching at it vigorously when he was a cat, and later ineffectually attempting to reach it with his warty toad feet - with no success. He suspects that only the witch is capable of removing it. Ian can’t even run away -  _ hop _ away - because whenever he reaches the fence surrounding Mickey’s house, it suddenly feels like he’s trying to move through thick mud. He’s trapped, enslaved. Nobody knows he’s here, and he doesn’t know anyone who would try to rescue him if they did.

The only possible chance of escape is if Ian somehow finds a way to kill the witch, but he already tried that and it ended badly. In all his life, he’s never felt so helpless.

As if to punctuate that point, the witch bursts out of his hut - naked from the waist up and chewing on a small stick - and scoops Ian up from under the bush. Ian waves his stubby legs in panic as the ground lurches away from him, and suddenly finds himself at eye level with the witch, who takes the stick out of his mouth with his free hand and spits on the ground.

“We’re going out today,” Mickey announces. “You gotta learn the ropes sooner or later.”

Ian glares at him venomously. Unfortunately he doesn’t have any real venom; one of the first things he did after being turned into a toad was try to spit venom, like he’s seen some toads do, or squeeze it out through his skin. He even tried to bite Mickey with his gummy toad mouth, but the witch had just laughed at him nastily.

Mickey gets dressed, and Ian gets dumped unceremoniously in the witch’s coat pocket. He struggles for a moment, suffocated by the material, but manages to hook one of his feet over the edge of the pocket and haul his head out. The swinging of Mickey’s coat as he walks makes Ian feel nauseated, and he closes his eyes in misery.

“So, lesson one,” Mickey says brusquely, somewhere above Ian’s head. “My magic, it comes from the forest. I respect it, I look after it, I protect it from piece o’ shit monster-hunters that come trampling through. So long as this place is healthy, I’m the baddest motherfucker in it.”

Being the baddest motherfucker in the woods involves a surprising amount of flower-picking. Mickey stops at a bush with pink blossoms and carefully stows a few of them away in a pocket of his bag (“ginatia petals,” he tells Ian). He stops periodically to harvest herbs and fungi, including a great deal of mint (“some asshole ruined my whole stash”). He leaves a small wooden bowl of milk and a chunk of bread by a tree trunk (“pixies, man - gotta stay on their good side”). He exchanges a curt nod with a horrific-looking creature apparently made entirely out of animal bones, which turns its skeletal head to stare at them as they pass its lair.

“Leshen,” Mickey explains in a hushed voice, clearly on edge. “One of the forest’s homegrown guardians. It kinda does what I do, except it’s way fucking scarier.”

Ian knows what a leshen is, of course, though he’s never attempted to kill one before. As the creature fixes its empty-eyed gaze on him, he lets himself sink a little deeper into Mickey’s pocket.

“Weird to see that thing out in daylight,” Mickey comments, once they’ve left the leshen behind. “It seemed kinda on edge. I…” He comes to an abrupt stop, causing his coat to swing back and forth and Ian to tumble around helplessly in his pocket. Ian hears the witch swear under his breath, and then suddenly he breaks into a run.

Ian gets thrown into the bottom of the pocket, where he attempts to curl up as well as he can with his clumsy toad body. He’s tossed and swung around in his cloth prison, and he involuntarily starts making a panicked chirping noise that he’d probably be embarrassed by, if he wasn’t so busy trying not to throw up. Then the ride comes to an abrupt end when the ground drops out from under Ian and he’s falling, falling, then hitting the ground with a violent thud and rolling over, getting tangled up in Mickey’s abandoned coat.

He panics, suffocated, scrabbling with his stubby toad feet to try and find an exit. He can hear muffled yelling somewhere nearby. Finally, Ian spies daylight and wriggles toward it, wincing at the scrape of rough fabric on his skin. He emerges from under the coat just in time to see Mickey dropping to his knees in the wyvern’s nest, his head bowed.

Ian hesitates. He know that the witch being able to enter the wyvern’s nest without being eviscerated can’t mean anything good for the wyvern. Curious, he hops through blades of grass as tall as trees - still trying to get used to the jerky, abrupt mode of travel.

“C’mon,” Mickey is muttering, his hands busy, when Ian finally makes it to the nest. He scrabbles clumsily over the rim and takes in the sight of Mickey cradling the monster’s limp, scaly head. “C’mon, don’t be dead, don’t be dead…”

He holds up his blood-streaked right hand and murmurs a quick phrase. Light gathers around his fingers - soft, at first, then brightening until it’s almost blinding. Mickey brings his hand in close to the wyvern’s face, shining the light in each of its eyes - searching for signs of life. There’s a long moment of silence. Then, the light fades. Mickey lets his hand drop, and his shoulders droop. Ian can’t see his face from this angle - just the slow heaving of his back.

“Fuck,” the witch says in a hollow voice. “They took the eggs, too. Those fuckers couldn’t even leave the babies. A few days more and they would have hatched.”

Ian shifts awkwardly on the edge of the nest, but the movement dislodges him and he skids down in a small avalanche of tiny bones and dirt. The witch looks around at him, his expression dark and heavy. But Ian is distracted by the smooth, stone-like object half-buried under dead scales that broke his fall, and soon it catches Mickey’s eye, too.

“Well,” he says. “Son of a bitch.”

He picks Ian up, resulting in some undignified leg-wriggling before he’s deposited in another part of the nest. He gets his feet under him and hops around in time to see Mickey carefully drawing a large egg out of the nest and dusting off its surface. The lines of anger and grief don’t leave his face, but something else softens his brow just a fraction.

“I could hatch this,” Mickey says, glancing at the wyvern’s corpse. “I know a trick. It wouldn’t work if the egg wasn’t this far along, but if I can…” He pulls a knife out of a holder on his belt, and waves a hand absent-mindedly at Ian. “Here, I’ll need you to hold the body still.”

At first, Ian doesn’t quite realize what has happened. Then he notices that the ground is suddenly far away again, and Mickey doesn’t look so terrifyingly huge any more. He looks down at his hands and they’re  _ hands _ \- his hands. All the familiar freckles and tiny scars that he knows so well. He reaches up to his head and there’s hair there, not fur or warty skin.

“Hey, perk the fuck up, monster-killer,” Mickey snaps. “This is kind of time sensitive.”

Ian looks at Mickey. He looks at the wyvern. He looks at the egg.

He reaches out, fast as a whip, and grabs the egg. He vaults out of the nest and starts sprinting away as fast as he can.

Ian doesn’t hear exactly what Mickey screams as he scrambles to give chase, because the entire forest around them screams with him. Ian grits his teeth and fights as his connection to the witch tugs at the amulet around his throat and drags at his legs. He focuses only on the rock outcropping that he’s running for, with visions of smashing the egg open on it.

The witch hits him out of nowhere - not with his magic, but with whole body. The tackle knocks all the breath out of Ian’s body, and the egg out of his hand. It lands in the grass and rolls a little way before stopping, unharmed.

Ian reaches for it, but then a dizzying blow strikes his jaw and he sees the witch’s face above him, contorted and furious. Gathering his wits hurriedly, Ian strikes back and lands a bruising hit on Mickey’s cheekbone. The witch shakes his head, temporarily stunned, then starts landing body blows in a flurry, trying to overwhelm Ian into submission.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” the witch yells, punctuating his the strikes of his fists. “It’s a fucking baby!”

“It’s a  _ monster _ ,” Ian snarls, spitting blood. “It’ll grow up, and it’ll steal cattle and kill people. I’m doing the world a favor!”

“You son of a bitch,” Mickey seethes. He pulls his fist back as far as it will go, drags Ian head up by the collar of his shirt, and then punches him in the face so hard that his head rebounds off the ground. The double impact rattles Ian’s brain inside his skull and makes him temporarily lose his sight. When he comes back to himself, Mickey has climbed off him and is carefully picking up the egg and checking it for damage. Ian groans in weak defiance and tries to sit up, but his body refuses to oblige. So instead of attacking, he talks.

“You’d better kill me,” he heaves, spraying a fine mist of blood from his mouth. “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

“You piece of shit,” the witch breathes. “That’s all you know, huh? How to fucking kill.”

“You turned me into a toad,” Ian reminds him, managing to roll over a little, trying to get his feet under him.

Mickey stares into the smooth surface of the egg, perhaps looking at his own reflection. His mouth twists.

“I like you better that way.”


	4. Chapter 4

Mickey takes as much of the nest material as he can carry, along with a thick slice from the wyvern’s belly. He also takes clippings from its horns and claws, a collection of scales, and vials of its blood and saliva. The creature’s death is a tragedy, but Mickey can at least make sure it doesn’t go entirely to waste.

Near the fireplace he sets up a miniature nest for the egg, and lays the wyvern belly over it like a blanket. If he can trick the egg into thinking it’s still being incubated by the mother, it just might hatch. There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s the best he can do.

That taken care of, he turns his attention back to his wayward familiar, who had been thrown into a small birdcage as soon as they got back. The toad stares out at him defiantly, and Mickey fixes it with a glare in return. He opens the cage and reaches in. The toad scuttles backwards clumsily, but there’s no escape, and Mickey grabs hold of it hard enough to make it squeak in pain.

Mickey walks over to the fire, toad in hand. Its tiny legs are waving helplessly. He looks down at the egg, and then into the flames.

It needs to be done. The monster-hunter can never be allowed to leave, and he’s a really shitty servant. He needs to die. There’s no need to draw this out.

When he finally accepts that he doesn’t have the heart to throw this squirming creature into the fire, Mickey lets his hand drop and his fingers loosen. The toad wriggles free and hops away to hide under the table, peering out warily at Mickey.

He should probably just kill it, but Mickey is tired and heartsick. He remembers doing his usual rounds and finding the wyvern nest, and the excitement of knowing that she was preparing to lay eggs. He remembers the morning he first saw them, with their exhausted mother laid on top of them, covering them with her wings. He could only ever watch from a distance - the creatures of the forest aren’t tame, and the mother would have killed Mickey if he’d ever gotten too close. But for months he’d watched over this family, and now it was almost completely wiped out.

Glancing over at the toad, whose eyes seem to gleam mischievously in the shadows, Mickey hastily casts a protection spell over the egg and its nest. Then, thoroughly drained, he curls up on the pallet in the corner of his hut and does his best to put the entire awful day behind him.

* * *

After the incident at the wyvern’s nest, and Mickey threatening to throw him into the fire, the fight seems to go out of the monster-slayer. He sits and watches Mickey tend to the egg with dull, glazed eyes at first, but then he starts spending more and more time out in the garden. When Mickey goes to water his plants he sees the toad huddled under a small pile of rocks, gazing out at nothing. Its warty orange skin looks somewhat paler than before.

On the third morning after discovering the wyvern’s body, Mickey finds the toad sitting on the garden pathway, where any passing bird of prey might swoop down and pick him up. Mickey squats down and prods the toad gently. A dry flake of its skin comes loose as he does so, and the toad topples over without a fight.

Mickey contemplates his familiar - torn between his hatred for monster-slayers and his inability to ignore a suffering animal.

“So that’s it, huh?” he says. “After all that, you’re just gonna lay down and die?”

The toad doesn’t move. Its throat pulsates, slow and weak.

Mickey sighs and swipes a hand down his face. Then he goes and fetches a large bowl from the house, and dips it into the pond, scooping up a sizeable pool of water. He picks up the toad on his way back inside the house, and dumps it unceremoniously into the bowl of water.

He ignores it for a while after that, focusing instead on brewing a tincture to help him sleep. But after a few minutes he hears a quiet splashing from the table where he left the bowl. He glances over and sees the toad slowly rolling over in the cool, muddy water - soaking and soothing its dry, sore skin. A smile comes to Mickey’s face unbidden, and he quickly looks away to conceal it.

Seemingly deciding to give life another go, the toad eats hungrily - bread crumbs and small hunks of cheese from Mickey’s dinner plate. While the creature is distracted, he stealthily puts a few drops of the tincture into its bathing bowl. It hops back in for a quick wash after its meal, and re-emerges with sleepy, sluggish movements - soon falling asleep between two jars on Mickey’s ingredients shelf.

Once he’s sure that it’s out cold, Mickey gently lifts the toad down and places it on his bed. He focuses on the essence of the creature in front of him, and after a while he senses it straining to return to its natural form, held back by the power of Mickey’s spell. Lifting it is as easy as letting a heavy stone drop to the ground, and quite suddenly the toad is gone and a human male with orange hair and pale skin is slumbering peacefully on Mickey’s pallet.

Mickey glances over at his knife, hanging on a hook by the door, but he doesn’t want to make a mess. Instead, he places his hand on the man’s chest.

He’ll do it with magic. It’ll be easy to slow the heartbeat to a complete stop, and the monster-slayer won’t feel a thing. Mickey will bury him in the forest - a sacrificial offering as recompense for all the creatures that this man has ruthlessly murdered.

This isn’t a tiny squirming toad. This isn’t a small and vulnerable cat. This is just a human, and Mickey has no special love for humans.

And yet.

The man’s heartbeat is strong and slow, thudding under Mickey’s fingertips. The light of the fire brings out striking tints in his hair, and Mickey notices that even his eyebrows and eyelashes are that same shade of ginger. His shirt is loose at the collar, so that his fair curls of chest hair are on display, and his stomach is flat and firm, rising and falling with his breath. He has broad shoulders and narrow hips and long legs. And his face… his face looks so innocent when he’s sleeping like this. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man who tried to murder a helpless near-born wyvern.

Mickey focuses on that memory, grits his teeth, and tries to force the death spell down through his fingertips to wrap around the monster-slayer’s heart. But it’s a vain effort; casting spells is an act of willpower, not instruction, and Mickey’s certainty has wavered. He can’t kill this man, not while he’s sleeping. It would be like taking the bloom of a rose bush and slowly crushing it in his fist - an act of pure, cold vindictiveness.

Stifling a groan of frustration, Mickey buries his head in his hands. He almost wishes that he hadn’t been near the wyvern’s nest that day, that he had never captured this man and tried to turn him into a servant. The wyvern ended up dead anyway, and now Mickey is saddled with a problem that only seems to be getting bigger, no matter how many times he turns it into a toad.

* * *

The monster-slayer is woken up the next morning by the sound of the door shutting, as Mickey returns from tending to his plants. He opens his eyes slowly, and then startles and sits up on the bed. Mickey watches warily from the other side of the hut as the man looks down at his (human) hands, looks up at Mickey with poorly-guarded panic, and then glances round the room quickly - searching for a weapon.

“Oh calm the fuck down, cupcake,” Mickey snaps impatiently. “And don’t even think about trying about trying anything. Unless you want to find out first hand what it’s like to be a dung beetle.”

The man clenches his fists in the rough blanket, then slowly uncurls them. “What do you want from me now?” he asks in a hard, suspicious voice.

“Your name, for one fuckin’ thing.”

“You curse a lot.”

Mickey raises his eyebrows. “Is that _Sir_ Curse-a-lot, or…?”

“Ian,” the man interrupts impatiently. After a pause he adds, “Gallagher.”

Alright. Progress. Mickey places a hand on his chest with exaggerated formality and says, “Mickey Milkovich.”

Ian tilts his head a little. “Sounds foreign.”

“I’ve lived here longer than you have, bitch,” Mickey snaps - rude by default. He does his best to calm himself, then asks, in a marginally softer voice, “You ain’t from around here anyway, right? I never seen hair like yours before.”

“I’m an orphan,” Ian says shortly. “Dropped off outside a church when I was a baby. I don’t know where I’m from.”

Mickey acknowledges this with a wry quirk of his mouth. He can see why this kid has a chip on his shoulder. “Well, Ian Gallagher,” he says. “You’re probably wondering why you’re not a toad.”

Ian reaches up and scrubs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair, his bicep bulging a little with the movement. “How is this my life?” he wonders aloud.

“It’s like this,” Mickey barrels on. “You’re my familiar now. That’s non-negotiable. What _is_ negotiable is how long you’re gonna be my familiar for. Figured you’d want some say in that.”

“Sure. How about I leave after breakfast?”

Mickey squats down on his knees so that he and Ian are on the same eye level, and gently rests the fist of his right hand in the palm of his left. “Free haggling tip,” he says. “You go too high or too low, you risk insulting the other guy. That’s where things can get nasty."

Ian holds his gaze. His eyes are the same shade of green as the scum on Mickey’s pond when it's dappled in summer sunlight. “OK. What would you suggest.”

“A hundred years.”

Ian scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

Mickey remains stony-faced. Ian’s smile drops.

“You’re not serious,” he says, with slightly wavering certainty.

“Takes a lot of time, patience and effort to train up a familiar. I’m not gonna show you the ropes just so you can bail after fifty years.”

“Fifty! I’m not staying with you _one_ year, let alone fifty.”

“Oh yeah? What you gonna do, tough guy? Gonna kill me?”

“I said I would,” Ian reminds him in a low, dangerous voice.

“Fine, go ahead. Except that amulet ties you to me. I die, you die. Got it?”

“I’d rather be dead than be a slave,” Ian snarls, his fists clenching in the blanket again.

“Familiars aren’t slaves.”

“Oh no? Cause that’s what it fucking feels like!”

“That’s because you’re doing it wrong,” Mickey accuses, standing up again so that he towers over Ian. Unfortunately, that prompts Ian to stand up as well, and the situation is suddenly reversed. Standing fully upright, Ian’s head brushes the ceiling beams.

“Doing it wrong?” he echoes, seething.

Mickey continues to stare up into his face with calm mastery of the present conflict. “Yeah. Familiars are supposed to be like… like family. You can’t choose who your family is, but that doesn’t make you their fucking slave.”

“My family left me. So why can’t I leave you?”

“Because…” Mickey throws out his hands, suddenly sick of arguing semantics. “Because you got a magic fuckin’ collar round your neck. That’s why. Now, you ready to talk numbers?”

“What’s the point? A hundred years is a life sentence. Hell, fifty years would be a life sentence. I’ll die before you let me go.”

Mickey shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. That thing…” He points at the amulet. “Keeps you tied to my lifeforce, remember? I don’t get older, so you don’t get older.”

He waits while Ian processes this. Slowly, a look of horror crosses his face. “So you could keep me prisoner for… for like a thousand years, if you wanted.”

“Now you’re getting it. A hundred doesn’t seem so bad now, huh?”

“And what if I die? Does that kill you?”

Mickey snorts. “What do you think, I’m stupid? No. If you die, your ghost will still belong to me. I don’t recommend that. Nothing sucks worse than being forced to bury your own body.”

Ian has a god-awful poker face. Mickey watches the emotions play across his face as he thinks through the grim situation he’s in, searching for avenues of escape, only to realize that they’re all closed off. Finally, his shoulders slump in defeat.

“Sixty,” he mutters.

“Ninety-five,” Mickey counters quickly.

“Sixty-five.”

“Ninety-four.”

Ian glares. “Sixty-six.”

“Ninety-three years, three hundred and sixty-four days.”

Ian flinches. Then, through gritted teeth, he says, “Ninety.”

Mickey considers pushing him again, just for the fun of seeing Ian’s face turn even redder, but he decides to cut his new familiar a little slack. “Alright. Ninety.”

Ian spits into his hand, and holds it out. Mickey looks down at it, and laughs shortly.

“Oh no. We’re not equals here. We don’t spit-shake.”

“Then how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“Witches always keep our promises. We have to. It hurts the magic, if we don’t.”

Ian looks like he doesn’t really believe this, but he also seems to accept his lack of power in the situation. He raises his arm and braces his hand on one of the ceiling beams, looks around the small, smoke-filled hut.

“Ninety years,” he repeats, the words as heavy as if he had already lived through those ninety years.

Mickey claps him on the shoulder and exclaims, “But hey, you knocked ten years off!”

And then he turns Ian back into a toad.


	5. Chapter 5

Mickey is out in the garden on the day that the egg starts to hatch, so it’s Ian who discovers it first. He’s woken up from a very pleasant sleep in a sunbeam by a sharp tapping sound, and raises his head from the floor, immediately alert, his ears swivelling. He hears the tapping sound again, and this time he identifies the source.

Heaving himself up and padding over to the egg, Ian sniffs it cautiously, his whiskers twitching. Now that he’s close he can hear other noises - the soft scraping of tiny claws inside the shell, and a muffled trilling noise. There’s another sharp tap, and a hairline crack appears in the egg’s tough casing.

Ian glances over at the fire and contemplates rolling the egg into it. But he saw Mickey cast a protection spell, and Ian doesn’t want to find out what will happen if he tries to directly attack the egg. Another option is to simply watch and wait, and hope that the little monster breaks free and stumbles to its doom all by itself. But Ian’s pretty sure that would violate the contract (such as it is) between him and Mickey.

Besides, no one’s paying him to kill this nasty little beast. Why should Ian risk his own freedom for the sake of one stupid lizard?

His mind made up, Ian sits back and tilts his head up and starts yowling. It’s a horrible sound - like nails on a chalkboard - and it’s extremely cathartic to make. Ian tried it once in the middle of the night, but stopped abruptly when Mickey hurled a chamber pot at him.

Sure enough, after less than a minute of concentrated yowling, the witch comes bursting through the door with a stormy expression and a smudge of dirt on his face. He sees Ian sitting next to the egg and his eyes narrow further, but then Ian stops yowling so that Mickey can hear the now-persistent tap-tap-tapping inside the egg, and the witch’s expression changes completely.

“Holy shit,” he says, with a mixture of disbelief and glee, hurrying over to the fireside and crouching down to inspect the crack in the egg. “It fuckin’ worked. It’s hatching!”

Ian yawns in a bored way, pads away to the other side of the hut, then raises his leg and starts grooming his butthole to let Mickey know exactly what he thinks of the miracle of wyvern birth. Annoyingly, though, the witch has lost all interest in him - enraptured by the slowly hatching egg - and Ian’s cat instincts take affront at not being the centre of attention. After a while he wanders back over, trying to make it look like he just wanted to be closer to the fire.

“I’ve never seen this up close before,” Mickey says after about fifteen minutes of silence. Ian has never heard him use that tone of voice before, with no trace of aggression or sarcasm. “You get this close to a wyvern hatching in the wild, you’ll be dead before you get to see anything cool.”

Ian blinks slowly, then turns his head away. His moment of dignity is spoiled somewhat when Mickey abruptly turns him back into a human, and he falls down on his ass in surprise.

“Holy fuck, a little warning?” he snaps, still trying to chase the memory of licking his own butthole out of his head.

“Sorry,” says Mickey, not sounding at all sorry. “I figured you earned a few hours of opposable thumbs.”

Ian gives a soft _humph_ of protest, but decides not to argue the point. He rights himself and grabs a low stool to sit on.

“You like monsters, huh?”

Mickey finally looks up at the question, his excited expression dimming a little with annoyance. “I don’t like that word. Not the way you say it.”

“How do I say it?”

“Like you think they’re just a fuckin’ payday.”

Ian shrugs, unapologetic. “I don’t see them the way you do. Maybe because I’ve seen what they can do. To cattle. To people.”

“You think I haven’t?” Mickey snaps, keeping his voice low like he doesn’t want to disturb the hatchling. “I’ve just seen the other side. I’ve seen what happens when they’re left alone. When they’re given some fuckin’ space. They were here first, y’know?”

He’s silent for a few moments, the firelight picking out the furrow between his brows.

“You might wanna think about a new line of work,” he continues at least, his voice heavy. “Monster-killing… there ain’t much job security there. Their numbers are going down fast. There are less and less every fuckin’ year. Even without your help.”

Ian doesn’t know how to respond to that. He had never had too much trouble finding jobs, but there had been a bit of a quiet stretch before he was hired to kill the wyvern.

“It’s the cities,” Mickey carries on. “They’re spreading. They cut down the forests so they can build, and the monsters get killed ‘cause they’re in the way. Or they’re forced to move into each other’s territory, and they kill each other. There ain’t enough room for them to live and not bother people any more. Me and my sister, we’re trying to find safe places for ‘em, but…”

His voice trails off as the wyvern hatchling finally breaches the shell - just a hint of its brown beak appearing in the hole before retreating. The effort temporarily exhausts it, and the softer tapping noises return.

“Your sister is the witch that came by before, right?” Ian says, to break the silence.

Mickey nods absent-mindedly. “Mandy. She’s cool.”

Ian casts around for another topic, and settles on saying, “I never met a male witch before.”

Mickey smirks. “Me neither. Maybe I’m the only one.”

“You don’t have any brothers?”

The witch’s face drops a little. “Yeah, I do. They’re all warlocks. My dad too.” He stops speaking for a moment, glances up at Ian like he’s trying to decide whether to reveal more. Ian does his best to school his face into an interested, non-judgmental expression.

“What’s the difference?” he asks. “Between a witch and a warlock? I always thought it was just, you know, genitals.”

“Nah. I mean, yeah, most of the time. But it’s a different kind of magic. Warlocks are all thunder and lightning and necromancy and trying to get as much power as they can grab. It’s very dick-wavy. Being a witch is more about… life. Pulling magic out of the earth. Growing it. Taking care of it. It’s way more difficult, but it’s stronger. I think, anyway.”

“So what, you told your dad you wanted to be a witch and he freaked out?” Ian probes.

Mickey’s expression starts to close off again. “Nah. I mean, I did get exiled. But not for that.”

“What for, then?”

“Sodomy.”

The word hangs heavy in the air. Ian wonders if he should respond, in case Mickey thinks he doesn’t know what it means and tries to offer a definition. But Mickey doesn’t seem overly eager to explain, and Ian is fucking _reeling_. He stares at Mickey like he’s seeing him for the first time. Ian realizes that his mouth is hanging open stupidly, and hurriedly makes use of it without really thinking about what he’s going to say.

“So, like, your dad caught you fucking some guy up the ass?”

Mickey continues staring at the egg, his emotions unreadable. “No,” he says, with careful emphasis.

 _Oh_.

“Fuck,” Ian mutters softly. And for a moment he considers saying something else. Like, _it’s OK, I don’t care_. Or, _it’s OK, I am too_. But it doesn’t seem like Mickey needs that kind of reassurance, and besides, Ian technically still hates his guts.

“What’s the deal with those scars?”

The question jolts Ian out of his sudden paralysis, and he follows Mickey’s gaze to the palm of his own hand, which is laced with a pattern of rough, pale, ruler-straight lines. “Oh,” he says, smiling a little. “That was, uh, the Sisters of Mercy. I was raised in an orphanage and I was real bad at following the rules. You should see my ass.”

The final addendum hangs awkwardly in the air so soon after Mickey’s reveal of his preferences, and Ian almost stammers out something about how he didn’t mean it that way. But again, he doesn’t like Mickey enough to care about hurting his feelings.

“Sisters of Mercy, huh?” To Ian’s surprise, the witch is grinning - albeit a little wryly.

Ian chuckles. “Yeah. They picked the name.”

Suddenly the wyvern makes a renewed break for freedom, and this time bits of shell fall away and its entire head emerges from a hole in the egg. The trilling sound returns - louder and more indignant this time - and Mickey loses all interest in Ian and ducks down close to the egg. He makes a low, strange growling sound in the back of his throat, and huffs warm breaths onto the hatchling’s face.

Ian watches, fascinated, as Mickey coaxes and encourages the newborn wyvern to escape from the egg. He never actually touches it or tries to break the shell himself - only stays close and makes that odd cooing noise while the baby monster slowly fights its way to freedom with its beak and claws. Finally it slithers free and lays on the cool stone floor, its two legs not yet sturdy enough to hold it up, its flanks rising and falling in exhaustion.

Mickey shoves a bowl towards Ian. “Alright. Go out to the garden and get me as many bugs as you can get. Beetles, worms, snails - anything you can find.”

The task doesn’t take too long; Ian suspects that Mickey cast a spell to attract all the bugs to the surface. He returns after about fifteen minutes with a full bowl. “What are you going to… oh, _gross._ ”

Mickey has taken a handful of the squirming, still-living bugs and shoved them into his mouth. He chews rapidly, his face screwed up in disgust, and then leans down close to the baby wyvern. It lifts its head and opens its mouth instinctively, and Mickey spits a horrible paste of chewed-up bugs and saliva into its enthusiastically gaping beak. It swallows hungrily and opens its mouth again, and Mickey spits a little more food. The whole process takes about half an hour, and Ian is too morbidly fascinated to look away.

Once the wyvern is sated and returned to curl up in the makeshift nest, Mickey swills his mouth out with water and spits into the fire, which pops and sizzles. “Glad you were watching,” he says, once his mouth is clear. “Because that’s your job from now on.”

Ian stares, trying to figure out if Mickey is joking. “I’m… not doing that,” he replies slowly.

“Yes, you are. This is pretty much what being a familiar is - doing the gross jobs that I don’t wanna do. While it’s growing it’s going to need feeding three times a day, and once every night. So get used to the taste of bug juice.”

It takes a moment to process that he’s actually serious. Once he’s done so, Ian says, “You know, I really fucking hate you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Mickey stands up and scrubs his hand over Ian’s head, like he’s still a cat. “And there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”


	6. Chapter 6

The next time Mandy visits her brother, there isn’t a cat or an orange toad waiting to greet her. Instead, there’s a tall, leanly-muscled, red-haired young man chopping firewood in the garden. He’s flushed and sweating from the exertion, his damp shirt clinging to his skin, and she leans over the fence to enjoy the view for a moment before calling out to him.

“You must be the new guy.”

He pauses mid-swing and straightens up, turning around to look at her - a little curious, a little wary. She recognizes the amulet strung around his neck as the same one the cat and the toad were wearing. The young man swipes his sleeve over his face to clear it of sweat, seeming almost self-conscious.

“Hi,” he says at last. “Mandy, right? We, uh, I saw you before…”

“Mickey’s letting you walk around on two legs now?” she comments, raising her eyebrows.

“Just when he needs firewood chopping,” the man explains, a little resentfully. He holds out a hand. “I’m Ian.”

Mandy glances down at his hand, but doesn’t shake it. “Sorry,” she says. “Kind of a _faux pas_ , to pet another witch’s familiar.” She looks slowly down his body, then drags her gaze back up to his face, smirking suggestively. “Damn, but I might make an exception.”

Ian just laughs - but not in a mean way. He seems happy to finally have someone to talk to other than Mandy’s miserable brother. “Better than being a toad, anyhow,” he says.

“Baby, if you were my familiar I’d never change that body,” Mandy purrs, trailing her hand along the fence and walking in through the open gate. She stops just inside Ian’s personal space, breathing in the musky smell of fresh male sweat, and tilts her head back to smile up at him. He grins back, apparently charmed by the forwardness.

“Mandy.”

The mood is broken immediately by the clipped utterance of her name. Still standing close enough to Ian that his shadow keeps the sun off her face, Mandy glances over at the door to the cottage and sees Mickey standing there, glowering, his arms folded.

“Uh-oh,” Ian sighs, his mouth twisting regretfully. “Well, it was nice to meet you properly, Mandy.”

“You too…” she says, but the young man is suddenly gone. She looks down at her feet and sees the orange toad hopping away into the flowerbed.

“Keep your hands off my shit,” Mickey hisses, by way of greeting, pulling Mandy into a half-hug, half-headlock when she reaches the door.

“Ow, motherfucker!” She slaps him in the head until he lets her go, grinning. “Not my fault your shit is so pretty. I see why you went for capture instead of kill.”

“I needed a familiar,” Mickey responds coolly, heading into the house.

“Uh-huh, sure you did. And if your familiar happens to be six foot tall, with arms to die for, and seriously well-hung, well…”

“How the fuck do you know how well-hung he is?” Mickey sounds irritated, but Mandy detects a faint note of curiosity there.

She shrugs. “The way he carries himself. Like a guy with nothing to prove. You, on the other hand…” She sticks out her lower lip in mock-sadness and holds her thumb and forefinger just a little way apart.

“How fuckin’ old are you?”

“Not as old as you.”

Their bickering is interrupted by a short screech from the fireside, and Mandy’s eyes settle on the baby wyvern. It takes her breath away. She’s never seen one of the young ones this close before. It’s about the size of an otter, and is trying to prop itself up on its two legs and the bony spurs of its wings. It’s just a baby, though, and clumsy, and it flops over again.

“Wow,” Mandy says softly, approaching slowly and sitting down on the floor, so that she’s at the wyvern’s eye level. She reaches out hesitantly, but doesn’t touch it - just hovers her fingers over it for a moment. They’re not supposed to make skin-to-skin contact with the animals they intend to return to the wild. Their instincts tell them that human touch is dangerous, and they need to preserve that.

“You figured out the sex yet?” Mandy asks. It’s difficult with wyverns; sex differences don’t tend to manifest until they get a little older.

“It’s a little light. I think it’s a female. Or maybe a male, but the runt.”

Mandy reaches into the oversized bag that she carries everywhere and pulls out her drawing pad and pencils. She’s working on a bestiary, and isn’t going to pass up the opportunity to sketch an infant wyvern. She sits cross-legged on the floor, her eyes flicking between the paper and the mewling creature, tracing out the lines of its body first.

“Have you fucked him yet?” she asks casually. Her brother immediately swears as he pours boiling water over his fingers, caught off guard in the middle of making tea.

“Argh! The fuck are you talking about?”

“You know. Tall, red and handsome.”

Mickey glances towards the window, like he’s scared the toad might be eavesdropping. “Shut up, fuck, _no_ , I haven’t… that’s fucking sick, Mandy.”

She looks up from her drawing briefly and rolls her eyes. “Relax, moron. I’m not dad.”

“It’s not… he’s my familiar. I’m not gonna fucking… force myself on him. That’s gross.”

“Well, he’s not interested in me.” Mandy is unbothered by the fact; she’s conquered too many men’s bedrooms in her lifetime to be offended by one guy not being attracted to her. “I put on all the charm out there and I don’t think he even twitched.”

“Maybe he’s just not into skanks. _Ow_.”

Mandy withdraws her hand from where it just slapped her brother on the back of the leg. “You know it’s not healthy for you to be out here all by yourself,” she says. “That’s how witches end up going crazy.”

“Fucking drop it,” Mickey snaps shortly. He picks up the two cups of tea and hands one to Mandy, then settles down with her on the floor next to the wyvern. “That place in the mountains still good?”

“Yeah. As soon as it’s old enough to take care of itself, I’ll transport it. It’s at least 30 miles from the nearest village. Plenty of space.”

“For now,” Mickey says darkly.

They’re interrupted by the toad hopping onto the window sill with a big fat slug held carefully in its mouth. It eyes them with a long-suffering expression, then hops down onto the floor and over to the infant wyvern. Even at this young age, the creature is already much bigger than the toad and Ian looks a little nervous as he approaches. He hops onto the wyvern’s back, then up onto its head, and drops the slug into its gaping mouth.

“You poor thing,” Mandy coos. “Mickey’s got you on feeding duty?”

The toad gazes at her forlornly. Then the wyvern gives an irritated shake of its head, and Ian is thrown off and tumbles onto the cold stone floor with an indignant squeak.

“Why don’t you just turn him into a bird?” Mandy asks. “They’re great at catching bugs and feeding babies.”

“This is funnier,” Mickey explains.

“You’re a dick.”

“Hey, this is his punishment for profiting off murder. It ain’t s’posed to be easy.” He stares down into his tea for a while as Ian hops to his hiding place under the bed for a bit of peace and quiet, and Mandy starts shading in her picture. “You talk to dad lately?” Mickey asks at last.

Mandy screws up her face in disgust. “That asshole? Not for more than a decade. I ran into Iggy on a job the other day, though. He’s doing good.”

Mickey grunts in acknowledgment.

“You know, dad’s the one that exiled you,” Mandy points out gently. “Iggy doesn’t give a shit who you bang. He misses you, I think. Joey and Jamie and Tony do too. And the cousins. We’re all going to a bacchanalia next month, you should…”

“Forget it,” Mickey interrupts darkly. “I ain’t going to a party just so everyone can whisper behind my fuckin’ back. They want to call me a faggot, they can come down here and say it to my face.”

“Oh get the fuck over yourself,” Mandy scoffs.

“Get the fuck over myself?” Mickey echoes. Abruptly, he reaches over his shoulder and grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head. With his torso on display, Mickey lifts the glamor spell that he keeps in place and Mandy winces and looks away as the horrible, twisted burns on his back, shoulder and left pectoral are exposed. She hadn’t been there when it happened, but she had heard about Terry Milkovich trying to “burn the faggot” out of his son before disowning and exiling him.

“That was a long time ago,” she mutters feebly.

“Trust me, the memory’s still pretty fuckin’ fresh. I ain’t going through that again.”

Mandy is about to press the issue when there’s a soft _slap_ of the toad’s feet and belly hitting the floor. The Milkovich siblings both turn their heads to see Ian having emerged from under the bed, staring at Mickey’s scars. Hastily, Mickey pulls the glamor back into place and drags his shirt back over his head.

“Ain’t you got some fuckin’ work to do?” he snarls at his familiar.

Ian continues staring at him, just long enough that Mandy can see her brother’s blood start to boil. Then the toad hops up onto a stack of books, then onto a table, then onto the window sill and out into the garden again. Mickey combs his fingers through his inky-black hair and takes a few deep breaths, visibly struggling to regain his composure.

“God, I hate him,” Mandy says after an uncomfortable silence, staring down at her picture. “I can put it in the back of my mind, not think about it for years. But then I just have to think about what he did to me… what he did to you. And that bastard’s still out there, hurting other people. I want to kill him.”

“We can’t,” Mickey replies heavily, bringing his right hand up protectively across his chest, to rub at the shoulder where the burns are now hidden. “He’s too powerful. He’d squish us like fuckin’ bugs.”

“I know.” Mandy reaches over, a little awkwardly, and rests her hand on Mickey’s knee. “You should come to the bacchanalia. He won’t be there, and it would do you good to see the guys again. It would do us all good.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mickey says unconvincingly.

“And bring Ian,” Mandy continues, as though Mickey had just agreed instead of fobbing her off. “He probably misses the outside world.”

Mickey just grunts in acknowledgment. In the nest, the wyvern rolls over onto its back and yawns widely before curling up and going to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Mickey goes to the bacchanalia.

The wyvern turns out to be a runt male, not a female, which means that by the time the party rolls around it’s still not quite ready to be released into the wild. After some agonizing, Mickey decides to leave it in Ian’s care while he's away. It’s now too big to live in the house, and instead has its own pen in the garden - tethered to a metal hook to prevent it from flying away. Ian feeds it rabbits and squirrels that he traps in the forest, and it snaps up any passing rats and mice that it can catch as well.

“Just keep it fed and make sure it doesn’t escape” Mickey instructs, fiddling anxiously with the collar of his one and only formal jacket. “I’ll be back tomorrow night."

“Sure thing,” Ian says cheerfully. He’s in a good mood, because Mickey has turned him back into a human for the duration of his time alone. There’s still a spell tying him to the house and preventing him from going too far away, but he’s going to get 24 hours of walking around on two legs, with the whole place to himself.

“And don’t pet it. It’s not supposed to form attachments to humans.”

“I’ll try to resist the temptation,” Ian retorts sarcastically. Mickey considers punishing him for the backtalk, but he’s already running late.

He glances over his shoulder as he heads to the portal in the broken-down churchyard, and sees Ian tossing hunks of bloody meat to the wyvern, which catches them neatly in its jaws. Mickey looks away hurriedly. He doesn’t like seeing animals dead or harmed - even the non-magical kind. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a vegetarian wyvern.

The bacchanalia is already underway by the time he arrives. It’s being hosted in the ruins of an ancient castle on the edge of a forest, which has been covered with candles and climbing plants and fountains of wine. It’s a mixed crowd - witches and warlocks, elves and dwarves, nymphs and satyrs, and even a few humans. Fights and orgies are equally likely to break out at such a celebration.

Mickey shifts uncomfortably as he stands on the edge of the crowd, and contemplates quietly slipping away and going back home. Before he can escape, though, Mandy spots him in the crowd.

“You made it!” she exclaims, walking over to him with a flagon full of wine. Mickey peers into it dubiously.

“You got beer?” he asks.

“It’s a bacchanalia, Mick, wine’s kinda the drink of choice. C’mon, the family’s over here.”

She leads him to a rowdy circle of Milkoviches, who are gathered in the grass among some fallen stones. Mickey feels his chest tighten as he approaches his brothers and cousins - certain that they’re going to whisper and stare at him. But they’re all pretty drunk, and they greet him with an enthusiastic roar.

“Holy fuck, the prodigal Milkovich returns,” Joey exclaims, grabbing Mickey by the head and rubbing his knuckles into his scalp like they’re still teenagers. Mickey punches him in the stomach a couple of times, and Joey laughs and lets him go.

“I got beer,” Iggy says, by way of greeting, and Mickey suddenly gets very emotional towards his brother. Iggy’s a swamp warlock, and his clothes and skin are permanently smeared with moss and algae, but Mickey throws an arm around him anyway as he accepts the beer. He settles down on the grass and sets out on the mission of getting drunk.

“Holy fuck, Mick, how long’s it been?” Tony asks in a slurred voice. “Hundred years?”

“Something like that,” Mickey mutters.

“How’s your place out in the woods.”

“Crowded. Got a wyvern living there.” He doesn’t mention Ian. If Mandy’s told them, fine. If not, Mickey’s not going to bring up the fact that he’s living with a guy - even if the guy is just a familiar.

“What is it with you and monsters?” Tony queries, elbowing Mickey in the ribs. “Closest I get to wyverns is when I’m hunting ‘em for ingredients.”

Mickey’s temper rises. “What, you can’t get that shit off carcasses? You know they’re dying out, right?”

Tony holds up his hands, indicating that he doesn’t want a fight, and turns away to talk to one of their cousins. Mickey stares down into his beer, listening carefully to the conversations around him for any whispers of _sodomy_ or _faggot_. He doesn’t catch anyone talking about him, but the paranoia remains.

After a while, the Milkoviches start to disperse. Tony gets approached by two nymphs and heads off into the woods with a huge grin on his face. Iggy sees an old enemy of his and goes off to get into a fight with him. Eventually Mickey’s bladder gets full from all the beer and he staggers off into the trees to take a leak, his head swimming pleasantly.

He’s just re-joining the party, looking down as he ties up his breeches, when he hears a familiar voice saying his name gently. Mickey looks up, startled, and he sees him.

Simon.

_Fuck._

“Fuck. Mickey.” Simon looks as taken aback as Mickey does. “Shit, what are you doing here? You never come to these things.”

“Yeah, good to see you too, asshole,” Mickey bites out defensively.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” Simon wipes a hand down his face, then scratches the back of his head. He looks as handsome as he did the last time Mickey saw him - maybe even more so. His shoulders are broad and straining a little at the dark blue material of his jacket, and his auburn hair is stylishly dishevelled. He stands a full head taller than Mickey, and his height only becomes more apparent as he steps closer.

Mickey wishes he hadn’t had so much to drink.

“You look good,” Simon says softly, a tentative smile playing on his lips. “I haven’t seen you since…”

“Yeah, well, I got exiled,” Mickey interrupts.

“Right.” A pause. “You know, I never got to thank you.”

Mickey frowns, wrongfooted. “Thank me?”

“Yeah. If you hadn’t held your dad off, given me time to escape… I think he would have killed me.”

Mickey grunts in acknowledgment.

“I heard what he did to you,” Simon ventures gently. “I mean, before the exile.” His hazel eyes suddenly look sad and regretful. “I’m… sorry. I’ve thought about it a lot. If I did the wrong thing, running away. If I should have stayed and tried to stop him.”

“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Mickey says dully. He’s not trying to comfort Simon, or assuage his guilt. It’s just the truth.

“No, probably not.” Simon sits down on a slab of fallen stone, landing a little hard. He’s obviously drunk. Mickey is too. He sits down on an old, worn statue that’s laying on its side, covered in ivy, a couple of feet away from Simon.

“You, uh. You come with anyone?” Mickey asks, hating himself for asking. Hating himself for admiring the way the firelight picks out the different tones of Simon’s olive skin.

“No, it’s just me,” Simon replies, giving the words a little extra weight. “You?”

“Nah,” Mickey says, staring at the ground. “I mean, my family are here. But I didn’t come with anyone.”

His stomach is churning. He’s excited and afraid and a little sick. He wants to stay here with Simon, and he wants to run away and never look back. It’s ridiculous; they haven’t seen each other in forever. But it’s like Mickey is a teenager all over again, and everything he felt back then has suddenly come rushing back.

“I’m glad you came,” Simon says, his voice warm now. “It’s really good to see you again, Mikhailo.”

Mickey’s stomach tightens into further knots at the intimate use of his given name. That sort of thing carries extra weight in the magical world. He looks up reluctantly and meets Simon’s gaze.

“Have you been with anyone else?” Simon asks carefully. “Since then.”

“Yeah,” Mickey admits. “A few people.”

“Men or women?”

 _Both._ “I… tried.” Mickey shouldn’t be saying this, but beer always makes him too honest. “I tried it with girls, but I couldn’t…” _Fuck._ “And then there were some guys. But no one…” _No one like you._

He’s all mixed up. Simon is standing up, and he’s taking Mickey’s hand, and pulling him to his feet. He’s so tall. He smells like pinewood and fresh-cut grass. He cups Mickey’s jaw in his hand, lifts it so that Mickey is looking up into his face - lost in those warm, brown eyes with their flecks of green. In the distance, Mickey can hear the sighs and moans of copulation as the celebration reaches its peak. His heart is beating frantically, and Simon’s hands are warm on his skin.

Mickey gives in. He buries his hands in Simon’s hair, drags him down and kisses him - hard and hungry. Simon moans a little into his mouth, then wraps his hands around Mickey’s lower back and pulls their bodies together. He slides his fingers under Mickey’s jacket and shirt and caresses his touch-starved skin. Mickey could cry from how good it feels to be handled like this again.

Breaking the kiss, Simon leans his forehead against Mickey’s for a moment, panting. “C’mon,” he says, guiding them deeper into the forest. “C’mon, c’mere…” He pushes Mickey’s formal jacket off his shoulders, shoves it down his arms and past his hands so that it falls to the grass. He works his hand up under the front of Mickey’s shirt, stroking the hot, sensitive skin of his belly. Mickey arches into the touch.

“Fuck _me_ ,” he groans. Then again, with emphasis, looking into Simon’s eyes. “Fuck me. Fuck me, yeah?”

Simon huffs out a laugh, smiles so wide, closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Mickey’s again. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yes, oh god, Mikhailo…” He drops his mouth down onto Mickey’s neck and Mickey tilts his head back, twitching minutely with every caress of Simon’s slightly chapped lips on his over-sensitized skin. He can feel the hot, hard, familiar press of Simon’s cock against his hip and he wants it, he _needs_ it.

Simon kisses his way down Mickey’s throat, bites at his collarbone. His mouth moves to Mickey’s shoulder and then he… stops.

Mickey knows why. The glamor makes his skin look normal, but Simon must be able to feel the rough, deadened wreckage of the burns under his mouth. The realization is like a bucket of cold water being thrown over Mickey’s head, and memories come crashing into his head before he can put up any defenses.

_Faggot..._

_Faggot..._

_No son of mine…_

_Burn the faggot out of you…_

_Faggot…_

_Faggot!_

Mickey’s fists clench automatically. He shoves Simon away, hauls back, and lands a brutal punch on his mouth. Simon staggers backwards with a cry, blood dripping from his lip. Mickey leans against a tree trunk and buries his head in his hands.

“Don’t touch me,” he warns, before Simon has even recovered. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.” He wraps his arms tight around himself, sliding the right one under his shirt to feel the mass of burn scars. His senses are flooded with the memory of smelling his own charred flesh, of hearing it sizzle like bacon in a pan. The fire had scorched him down to the bone. It had nearly killed him. Time hasn’t dulled the memory at all; it's still glass-sharp and painful.

“Mickey…” Simon’s voice is a little distorted from his swelling lip, but he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds devastated.

“I can’t,” Mickey mutters. “I shouldn’t have even fuckin’ come here tonight.”

“Yes, you should.” Simon takes a cautious step closer. “You can’t let him do this to you, Mickey. You can’t let him control you forever.”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Mickey seethes.

“I know you haven’t seen your father in a century,” Simon presses. “He may have exiled you, but he didn’t force you to live in the woods by yourself. He didn’t make you punch me just now. You did that, Mickey.”

“I can’t fuckin’ be here,” Mickey says, shaking his head and starting to walk away. He feels dizzy and sick. “I gotta get back home…”

“Please don’t go, _please_ …” Simon grabs him by his burned shoulder, tries to spin him back around, but Mickey shakes him off and hurriedly turns himself into a raven, flapping his wings frantically to get airborne, then rising up above the treeline and leaving Simon and the bacchanalia far below on the ground.

He could have taken the portal back, but instead he flies home - switching to the form of a hawk after a while to cover better distance. He needs to sober up, and he needs to not be human for a while. He crosses over fields and farmhouses and a fat, sprawling city, until eventually he ends up flying over his own forest again.

As he approaches home, confusion clouds Mickey’s bird brain. He could have sworn that he left the party early, but already it seems as though the reddish dawn is starting to spill over the horizon. It’s not until he gets closer that he realizes it’s not the dawn.

It’s _fire._

Mickey nearly drops out of the sky in horror - wondering if his worst nightmares have somehow become manifest. He picks up speed, soars low above the trees to the source of the fire, and then flaps down to the ground and changes back into human form, dropping to his knees on the soft ground and fallen leaves, and burying his hands in his hair as he stares with wide, horrified eyes.

His house - the only home he’s known for a hundred years - is on fire. The windows roar with flame like two demonic eyes. The goat pen stands open and empty, and there’s no sign of Ian or the wyvern.

The roof groans, and then caves in. Mickey topples back, lands on his ass, and buries his head in his hands - unable to watch any more as his life burns down to ashes, the heat of the fire warming his skin mockingly.


	8. Chapter 8

Ian hasn’t felt this free since the day he left the orphanage. As soon as Mickey’s out of sight, he heads back into the hut and takes a nap on Mickey’s bed, reveling in the relative comfort of it (better than sleeping on the floor). Then he spends some time absent-mindedly scratching the goats’ bristly heads and letting them lick the salt off his fingers (Ian might have killed monsters for a living, but he has nothing against goats). Only when the wyvern starts tugging restlessly at its tether does Ian reluctantly start on the list of chores that Mickey left him - starting with feeding the beast.

Privately, Ian has started calling it Mickey Jr. as his own petty form of revenge against his captor. When Mickey Jr. spits out the bones of the rabbit that Ian caught for him, Ian crosses his arms and says, “Oh, don’t worry, Mick. I’ll just clean that up for you. Your majesty.”

The wyvern eyes him balefully, then curls up and tucks its head under its wing, falling into a post-meal snooze.

Ian raids Mickey’s larder and finds some sweet honey cakes that he scoffs down hungrily. He can take the punishment for it later. He flips through Mickey’s books, including a book of sketches featuring the flora and fauna of the forest. They’re well-drawn, with bold outlines and cross-hatch shading, and Mickey has added notes around them in his scribbly, uneven writing.

Then Ian starts flipping through Mickey’s spellbooks, searching for a way to remove the cursed amulet that keeps him tied here, but they might as well be in a different language for all he can understand them (some of them actually are in a different language).

He takes another nap on Mickey’s bed, just because he can, and this time he sleeps much longer. When he wakes up it’s dark outside, and it takes a moment for him to realize that he’s been woken by the sound of voices. He squints at the window, and spies the flicker of torchlight.

Rolling out of bed and staggering to the door, Ian hears, “Get the goats, they’re valuable.” The voice sounds familiar. He opens the door and walks outside, squinting into the small mass of people gathered in the garden, and hears the voice again:

“You owe me a horse.”

“Fiona?” Ian’s eyes adjust, and he recognizes the gathered crowd as people from the village. They stare at him distrustfully, their knuckles whitening on the torches clutched in their hands.

“Some monster-killer you turned out to be. We had to hire someone else to finish the job,” Fiona scoffs. She glances over at the wyvern, which is crouched down low and baring its fangs in fear. “Though apparently he didn’t get it done either.”

“How the fuck did you find this place?” Ian asks.

“We hired a warlock.” Fiona nods at a thin, nervous-looking man with mousy hair, standing on the edge of the crowd. “Took a while, but he dismantled the protection spells. Now we’re here to burn this evil fuckin’ place to the ground.”

“And rescue me?”

“'Rescue' might not be the right word. You owe me, remember? You’re going to have to work off that debt.” She turns to the warlock and points at the amulet around Ian’s neck. “Can you get that thing off him?” she asks.

The man approaches Ian and peers at the amulet. “Rudimentary binding spell. He can’t take it off, but I should be able to…” He starts muttering under his breath in an unfamiliar language, and Ian hisses in pain as the amulet grows hot, burning the skin over his collarbone. He grabs the leather strap holding it in place and pulls the amulet as far away from his skin as it will go.

“Here,” Fiona says, tossing Ian a wood-cutting axe that he catches deftly with his free hand. “You promised me a dead wyvern. Time to deliver.”

The warlock’s chanting reaches a crescendo, and the leather snaps. Ian throws the collar away from him in disgust and rubs a hand over his finally freed neck. During the exchange, the villagers have been stacking dry straw and wood inside Mickey’s hut, and as Ian watches they set their torches to it. It catches quickly, the fire spreading.

Much as he hates Mickey, Ian feels a twist of regret as he stares into the flames. He thinks about all of Mickey’s carefully organized herbs, and the lovely sketches in his book - all burning down to ash. He looks down at the axe in his hands, feeling the weight of it.

“Come on,” Fiona prompts. “Before it gets too hot to stay here.”

“Right,” Ian mutters. He turns and walks over to the cowering, furious wyvern. It’s the size of a pony now. Another week or so and it would have been ready to return to the wild - to the mountains that Mandy promised.

As Ian approaches, Mickey Jr. calms a little. When he gets close enough, the wyvern shuffles over and rests its head against his thigh, peering around him distrustfully at the gathered villagers. Ian reaches out and touches the monster’s neck, feeling the bumps of its spine and the place where his axe will need to land to chop off the wyvern’s head with one clean blow.

He removes his hand and grips the handle of the axe tightly, his hands spread wide along its length for greater precision. As he takes a step back to do the deed, Mickey Jr. follows him anxiously, butting its head against Ian’s leg with a low, throaty growl.

“Some time this century would be good,” Fiona snaps, shielding her face from the heat of the fire.

Ian looks down at the wyvern. “Oh, fuck,” he sighs. He raises the axe high over his head, and brings it down fast and clean.

There's a moment of silence. Then Fiona screams, “Ian, what the _fuck_?” 

He grabs the trailing remains of the tether as the wyvern rears up and screeches with delight at its newfound freedom. Wrapping the rope around his hand, Ian aims the monsters head at the gathered crowd like a crossbow.

“Back the fuck up!” he shouts. “Back up, or I’ll make it burn you all to the fucking bone.”

“Ignore him!” Fiona counters, glaring at the suddenly nervous crowd. “They don’t breathe fire.”

“I heard they do,” mutters a heavily bearded farmer.

“They’re just small dragons, right?” a woman pipes up, backing away.

“That’s right,” says Ian, jerking threateningly on Mickey Jr.’s tether.

“That’s not right!” Fiona argues, turning back to stare at him in disbelief. “What the fuck are you doing, Ian?”

“It never hurt anyone,” he pleads. “It’s just a baby. I can take it far, far away from here where it won’t bother you. Just let me take it away.”

“So it can be someone else’s problem?”

“Fiona, _please_.”

Suddenly, from inside the hut, there’s an explosion of blue and green flames as the fire reaches one of Mickey’s concoctions. A smell like burnt vanilla fills the air.

“We don’t have time for this,” Fiona snaps impatiently. “You…” She points at the warlock. “Kill that thing.”

“Oh… OK…” The man takes a cautious step towards Ian and the wyvern.

Ian thinks fast. He’s still incredibly irritated at himself for not just killing the stupid monster like he was paid to do, but he’s gone too far now to go back on the decision. Praying that all the bugs and rats that Mickey Jr. ate over the past few weeks have put some decent muscle on his bones, he hops up onto the wyvern’s scaly back and tugs at its tether.

“Come on,” he whispers, leaning down close to its head. “Time to go.”

Mickey Jr. lets out a joyful screech and spreads his huge, leathery wings. There are cries of fright in the crowd, and even the warlock backs off. Ian presses his body down onto the leathery back of the beast and closes his eyes as the wings start to beat on either side of him. There’s a horrible lurch, and then a rhythmic rush of air as they leave the ground and start to rise high above the burning building and the mob of villagers.

Suddenly, an arrow whizzes towards them - just barely missing Mickey Jr.’s neck. The creature shrieks in fright and lurches in the air, nearly throwing Ian off.

“Higher!” he screams, trying not to throw up. “We need to go higher!”

But the wyvern isn’t used to flying, and certainly isn’t used to flying with a passenger. It ducks and swoops drunkenly as it tries to get above the treeline, and just as it starts to pick up speed and take them away from the danger another arrows flies up and pierces Mickey Jr.’s wing, bursting through the tough membrane with a spray of blood and leaving behind a tattered hole. The injured wyvern shrieks in pain and beats its wings faster, the wind whistling through its wound. They only get about half a mile away before they lose height, and crash brutally into the treetops.

Ian is thrown off and lands stomach-first on a branch, hanging over it like a piece of laundry. The breath is violently knocked out of him and he wheezes, desperately trying to refill his lungs. In the tree next to him, Mickey Jr. is scrabbling for purchase and letting out soft screeches of fear and confusion and pain.

“Shhh…” Ian hisses, wincing as the effort causes a fresh burst of pain in his chest. He definitely has at least one broken rib. “Shush, Mick, you gotta be quiet…”

He crawls along the branch, trying to get closer to the wyvern’s tree. He stretches his fingers out and just manages to graze the giant lizard’s snout. He stares into its eyes, trying to silently communicate the need to stay hidden.

Mickey Jr. finally manages to bury its claws and wing spurs in the bark of the tree, and stops thrashing. Its side is heaving with exhaustion, and it leans its head into Ian’s touch. He rests his own cheek against the branch that he’s lying on, and watches the bright flickering of Mickey’s burning home in the distance.

After a while, a weaker patch of light breaks away, and Ian realizes that it’s the villagers retreating. He tenses, but it seems that the wyvern’s wild, juvenile attempt at flight had the useful effect of making them harder to track, because the villagers are heading in the wrong direction.

Ian loses consciousness. He doesn’t know for how long, but when he opens his eyes again the blaze in the distance has dimmed a little, and the wyvern is nudging his hand with its nose and making small, distressed noises.

“It’s OK,” Ian says faintly, twitching his fingers. “We’re OK.”

Fortunately, the forest is old and the tree that Ian’s in has plenty of thick branches. When he’s recovered some of his strength, he lowers himself to the branch below, then grabs the trailing end of Mickey Jr.’s tether and tugs on it.

“C’mon,” Ian says. “I should take you back to the hut. I’ll just… I’ll leave you there and Mickey can figure out what to do with you. Then I can get the fuck out of this forest.”

The wyvern resists, though, scraping away bark as it tightens its hold on the tree. Its eyes are wide and panicked still. Ian sighs.

“Fuck it,” he mutters. “Mickey’ll find you. I’m going home.”

Slowly, painfully, he makes his way down the tree. He slips a couple of times, and his heart nearly jumps into his throat, but he manages to get down without major incident. When his feet hit the soft, warm soil of the forest floor, he has to resist the urge to get down on his knees and kiss it in relief.

Ian’s in bad shape. He breathed in quite a bit of smoke, and his ribs are screaming in agony. With one hand clutching the bruised area of his chest, he starts staggering in what he thinks is the direction of the village.

He’s been walking for less than a minute when he hears footsteps approaching behind him.

Ian turns around.

Mickey looks like some kind of demon. His face is red with fury and smudged with soot. His eyes are blazing, and sparks of magic crackle around his clenched fists. Ian staggers backwards, terror climbing into his throat.

“Wait…” he wheezes. “Just wait…”

Mickey swings. The first punch knocks Ian straight to the ground. It's not the last.


	9. Chapter 9

The first punch takes him down, and Mickey follows. Ian feebly raises his hands to try and protect his face, but Mickey easily knocks them aside and lands the brutal second punch across the monster-killer’s jaw - knocking his head to one side and spraying blood across the fallen leaves. Ian’s mouth gapes, blood in his teeth, and Mickey lays another punch across his right cheek, knocking his head to the other side.

This continues for some time; he isn’t sure exactly how long. As Mickey lays each blow down with one fist he’s already drawing the other one back in readiness for the next. He hates Ian now more than almost anyone he’s ever met - perhaps even more than his own father. He pictures Ian waiting until his back was turned and then casually slaughtering the wyvern that he helped to raise, that he fed from his own mouth, before setting a light to Mickey’s entire life. To Mickey, Ian is everything ugly and cruel in this world. He’s selfishness and greed and sadism and petty evil, and Mickey’s going to kill him.

The punches are each infused with a little magic - just enough to make them land harder, hurt more. When Ian’s face is a bloody mess Mickey starts in on the body blows, slamming his knuckles into Ian’s stomach and ribs. Ian’s still weakly trying to fight him off, but he’s barely conscious now.

“Why?” Mickey seethes, pausing the onslaught for a moment to grab Ian by the collar and haul him up off the ground, his head lolling loosely on his neck. “Why, you _fuck_? Why couldn’t you just serve your fuckin’ time, huh? Why’d you have to fucking _destroy_ everything?”

Ian tries to speak, but his eyes are dim and unfocused. He reaches up, and his fingers brush against Mickey’s heated cheek. Mickey pulls his fist back again, ready to resume the beating, and he’s so focused on Ian that he doesn’t notice the dark shape barreling through the trees towards him until it’s too late.

Mickey goes flying, spinning through the air and slamming against a tree trunk. He groans, disoriented, and scrambles up onto all fours, readying a spell in his mind. But when he turns around, the sight before him stops him in his tracks and the spell dies on his lips.

The wyvern is crouched protectively over Ian - its two sturdy legs either side of his crumpled body, and its wings forming a canopy to shield him. It hisses a warning at Mickey, and he immediately drops down to his knees and holds up his hands in surrender.

Ian stirs weakly. The wyvern turns its terrifying gaze away from Mickey and ducks down to nuzzle at the fallen human. Its dry, rough tongue flicks out to taste the blood on his face and it croons throatily in distress.

And Mickey realizes that maybe, just maybe, there might be more to this story than he assumed.

* * *

Calming the wyvern down isn’t easy. In the end, Mickey has to work a small spell just so it will let down its defenses for long enough to let him get to Ian. He transforms his familiar into an animal so that he’ll be able to carry him back, but doesn’t really focus on the form, so he gets a horrible twist in his stomach when Ian takes the shape of a small, scruffy terrier - cringing away from Mickey in fear and trying to hide its battered head underneath its paws.

He carefully scoops it up under his arm and grabs the wyvern’s tether with his free hand. Mickey expects to face a fight getting it to head back to the hut, but the wyvern goes with him easily, its eyes fixed on the injured dog.

The walls of Mickey’s home are still mostly intact - albeit blackened and weakened from the fire. The thatched roof is gone, though, and most of what’s inside has been reduced to charcoal and ash. His garden is a scorched mess, and his animals are all gone (Mickey prays that the toads managed to escape safely, because the heat of the blaze has dried up his pond).

He finds the metal hook in the ground where the wyvern’s pen stood and secures the creature with the remains of its tether. Then he carefully sets the dog down in the lee of the house. It lies down limply, its flanks rising and falling very quickly, emitting soft whines of pain. Each noise is like a knife in Mickey’s gut, and suddenly he can’t take it any more. He lifts the transformation spell, and then Ian’s there again - lying on the ground, his face swollen and red and barely recognizable.

“Alright, stay put,” Mickey instructs, amazed by how unrattled he sounds. He casts around the wreckage of his garden for anything he can use to treat Ian’s injuries, but every last leaf has been destroyed. What he does find, however - half-buried in the ash - is the amulet that used to hang around Ian’s neck.

Mickey picks it up and peers at it. There’s no way that Ian could have broken this by himself, which means that someone else must have been here - someone who could work magic. Mickey panics suddenly, the memory of his father’s ugly, pock-marked face swimming unbidden into his mind. He returns to Ian and slings the collar around his neck, re-sealing it with a spell before his familiar can figure out what’s going on.

“Who did this?” Mickey demands, squatting down on his haunches so that he and Ian are on the same level. “I know you didn’t get that amulet off by yourself, so what happened? Did you find a way to contact your friends? Get ‘em down here so they could destroy my home?”

Ian peers at him blearily through the swollen slits of his eyes.”Didn’t...” he mumbles. “They jus’ showed up.”

“Who? Who showed up?”

“Villagers. Warlock.”

Mickey’s panic rises, and he tries not to let it show. “The warlock, was it an older guy? Scary looking?”

Ian shakes his head loosely, then winces in pain. “Young. Nervous.” Twitching his chin vaguely in the direction of the wyvern, he adds, “He’s hurt. They shot him. Left wing.”

Sure enough, when Mickey goes over to examine the wyvern, he finds a small, tattered hole in the creature’s wing. Fortunately it appears that the arrow didn’t strike anything vital, and the wound should heal by itself soon. Mickey reaches out and mutters a quick spell to soothe the creature’s rattled nerves and ease its pain. The wyvern slowly relaxes and hunches down on the ground, but continues to eye Mickey warily, in a way that causes a pang of guilt and shame right in the pit of his stomach.

“He thinks you’re his mommy,” Mickey tells Ian when he returns. “I guess it’s my fault for making you feed him.”

Ian doesn’t say anything. His head is turned away; his face too swollen to make out his expression. Mickey bites his lip.

“I can take some of the pain away,” he offers. “And I can help you heal a little faster.”

A bitter, wheezy laugh escapes Ian. “What a fuckin’ hero,” he mutters.

“Hey, my entire fucking life just got torched!” Mickey snaps. “You…” He has a whole tirade planned out, but as he stares at Ian’s ruined face the words die on his lips. Instead of ranting, he spreads his fingers, flexing his magic, and mutters the same spell that he used to help the wyvern. Ian closes his eyes and breathes out slowly, slumping down lower against the wall.

The sun is rising now, ending one of the worst night’s of Mickey’s life. His drunkenness is starting to morph into a hangover, and he can still feel the ghost of Simon’s touch on his skin. He’s exhausted and ashamed and heartsick. His home is gone, along with all of his possessions. He hasn’t felt this helpless and alone since the day he fled his father’s rage. He leans back against the fire-scorched wall of his gutted house and closes his eyes.

Then Mickey pulls himself together, because he has to. He cups his hands and blows through them to make a low whistling noise, and after a few seconds a large, black raven flies down and lands on his outstretched hand. Mickey whispers in its ear and then throws it back up into the air. It flaps its wings furiously, and then swoops off into the dawn.

Mickey is exhausted. He heads back into what remains of his house, curls up in the spot where his bed used to be (there are just small chunks of charcoal left now) and falls into a restless, miserable sleep.

It’s around midday when he wakes, the sun glaring down on him and overheating his pale skin. Mickey grimaces and stirs, then realizes that he’s been woken by the sound of approaching voices. He tenses, instinctively gathering up his magic in readiness for a fight, but as he listens he realizes that the voices are familiar.

Then, a yell: “Mickey!”

Mickey stumbles through the empty doorway of his former house, glancing down at his arms as he does so and realizing that he’s absolutely covered in soot. Ian is still where he left him, looking up resentfully at Mickey as he emerges. Time has darkened the bruises on his face, making him look even worse.

Before either one of them can say anything, Mandy emerges from the trees - followed by Mickey’s four brothers. They all look a little pale and sick from their hangovers, and they squint critically at the mess where Mickey’s home used to stand.

“Fuck are you guys doing here?” Mickey demands.

“We were with Mandy when the bird arrived,” Iggy explains, scratching his nose sleepily. “Man, they really fucked this place up.”

Mickey glares at Mandy, who stares back at him, unimpressed, and folds her arms. “They wanted to help, Mick.”

The Milkovich siblings spread out over the wreckage of Mickey’s small plot of land, kicking over burnt relics and muttering critically. The wyvern eyes them warily, pacing back and forth as far as its tether will allow.

“So you got a torch-wielding mob, huh?” Tony comments. “I know how that goes. They fucked you up pretty good.”

It takes a moment for Mickey to realize that the last sentence was not directed at him. Tony’s talking to Ian, who is still sitting slumped against the wall.

Mickey tenses. Technically he does have the right to beat his familiar, but… it’s not something that good witches and warlocks do. Terry used to beat his familiars all the time, usually until they died, and then he would simply replace them. If Mickey’s brothers find out that he’s responsible for Ian’s injuries then they won’t criticize him for it, but he knows that they’ll exchange glances and talk about it amongst themselves later.

But all Ian says is, “Yeah. Yeah, they got me good.”

Mickey’s taken aback. He stares at Ian, but Ian keeps his own gaze carefully averted. Then Mandy crouches down next to him, muttering angry words about the villagers, and starts pulling healing tinctures and gauze out of her bag to tend to Ian’s injuries.

With marginal teamwork and a lot of complaining, Mickey’s brothers start using a combination of magic and muscle to clean up the ruined mess of his home. Mickey knows he should help, but for a while he just stands there watching them with a gradual tightening sensation in his chest. Until last night he hadn’t seen his brothers for over a century, but now here they are - rallying together, hangovers and all, to help him start to rebuild his life. Sentimentality doesn’t come easily to Mickey, but this… this is more than he ever expected.

“Mandy says I should go to the river.” Mickey realizes that Ian is now standing next to him, slightly hunched over and clutching his ribs. “The cold will help the swelling go down.”

“Right,” Mickey mutters distractedly.

“You’ll need to go with me,” Ian reminds him through gritted teeth. “Unless you wanna take the leash off.”

Mickey looks at his family, and decides he needs a break. “Nah. I’ll go with you.”

They don’t say anything throughout most of the walk to the river. Mickey keeps glancing over at Ian, but his familiar won’t look at him. He’s radiating anger and resentment, even if he’s not speaking it aloud and it… it doesn’t make sense.

“Why’d you cover for me?” Mickey blurts out.

“What?”

“Why’d you tell my brothers the mob beat you up?”

“Can we fucking drop this? My ribs are killing me.”

“I didn’t need you to do that,” Mickey barrels on furiously. “If you think you can hold that shit over me, forget it, I don’t care if you tell them.”

“I didn’t do it for you!” Ian snaps.

“Then why?”

His familiar groans in annoyance. “I… shit. I just didn’t want them to know, alright?”

“Why?” Mickey persists.

“Because!” Ian winces. “You’re fucking… you’re like five foot five, OK? It would be like… admitting I got the shit beat out of me by a gnome.”

Mickey stares at him, dumbfounded. Of all the answers he might have expected, that was not one of them. “You lied because you’re fucking embarrassed a short guy kicked your ass? That’s it?”

“This is why I wanted to drop it.”

They’ve reached the river now, and while Mickey is trying to figure out whether he’s amused or insulted by the revelation, Ian slowly and painfully pulls his shirt over his head. His ribs are a mess - covered in red and purple bruising. At least one of them is fractured, from what Mickey can see. He pretends to look away when Ian starts untying his breeches, but can’t keep his gaze from straying back.

Even with all his injuries, Ian is… perfect. Almost irritatingly so. He has long legs and broad shoulders and lean muscles, and his pale skin is dusted with ginger hair - thicker on his chest and belly. He’s one of the best things that Mickey has ever seen, and he’s completely untouchable.

Ian sucks in a huge breath and swears loudly as he walks into the freezing river. He wades in until the water is waist-height and then lets his feet float out from under him, dunking his torso and then his head. He stays there for about ten minutes, soaking his injuries, ducking his head underwater until he’s forced to come up for air. Mickey leans back against a tree and tries to affect an air of nonchalance.

When Ian finally emerges the swelling has gone down somewhat, and his face is starting to look recognizable again. He’s shivering violently, though, and without thinking too much about it Mickey casts a spell that pulls warmth from the surrounding air and wraps it around Ian like a blanket.

It takes even longer for Ian to pull his clothes back on than it took for him to remove them, and Mickey has to focus on staring at the ground as Ian’s muscles flex and his skin stretches taut. Finally, when the familiar is dressed, Mickey leaves his spot by the tree and prepares to leave, but he’s stopped when Ian catches him by the arm.

His face is close, and angry. “Just to be clear,” he says in a low, dangerous voice. “If you ever, _ever_ , fucking hit me again, I’ll hit you back. And I won’t go easy. Got it?”

Mickey bristles automatically, but he manages to get a handle on his temper before it runs away from him. He stares into Ian’s eyes and mutters grudgingly, “Got it.”

Ian lets him go. They head back to the house.


	10. Chapter 10

As they rebuild Mickey’s home, each of the Milkovich siblings adds their own little personal touch.

Iggy expands the toad pond into a full-blown patch of swampland, complete with iridescent dragonflies and a tree whose roots are sunk deep into the water. Mickey wakes up one morning and is privately overjoyed to discover that his toads have returned, and are happily splashing around in the muddy water.

Joey, who has a particular love for potions, builds a basement with shelves for all of Mickey’s ingredients and a hand-carved alchemist’s table, and lines the walls with protective spells.

Tony makes a serious bid to build an entire castle, but settles for simply adding a second storey to the house after a lively yelling match with Mickey. He refuses to let Mickey go upstairs until he’s done decorating, though, which means that by the time Mickey spots the king-size bed it’s too late to do anything about it.

Jamie, who shares Mickey and Mandy’s soft spot for animals, builds a large pen and then disappears one morning, returning at sunset with four goats and half a dozen chickens, which he swears he obtained legally.

Finally, Mandy plots out a large section of garden and plants all manner of shrubs, herbs, flowers and vegetables, as well as an apple tree sapling.

By the time they’re finished, Mickey’s home has tripled in size and the wyvern is finally old enough to be released back into the wild.

The very last step is to cast protective spells. They do this together, all six of them, creating a barrier so powerful that Mickey’s enemies could search the forest for a thousand years and never find his home.

They spend their last evening together laughing and joking around the outdoor fire pit (Mandy built it deep and very safe, with a high circle of stones and precautionary spells to prevent even the smallest spark from escaping). Ian, currently in the form of a cat, curls up on Mandy’s lap and goes to sleep as she absent-mindedly strokes his thick orange fur. His injuries have mostly healed now, and in his human form the bruises are barely visible.

The relaxed, slightly drunken banter comes to an a rather abrupt halt when Iggy - opining about some city mayor who kept trying to wage war on the eyesore of Iggy’s vast swampland home - casually calls the man a “faggot.” The atmosphere suddenly grows tense. Mickey stares down into his beer, not moving a single muscle in his face, even though his heart just lurched unpleasantly in his chest.

“Sorry, bro,” Iggy says hastily. “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine,” Mickey mutters. But then it seems like no one wants to volunteer a change of subject after that.

“You know we don’t give a shit, yeah?” Tony rumbles at last, breaking the silence. “That was all Dad. For a guy who’s fucked as many whores as he has, Dad’s got some weird hang-ups.”

“Life’s too short not to bang who you wanna bang,” Joey offers, nodding sagely.

Mickey wishes they could talk about literally anything else. He’s sure his face is bright red.

“You guys see him much?” he asks, glancing around quickly at his brothers.

They all offer answers in the negative, by way of shrugging their shoulders or shaking their heads.

“He comes around to see me every few years,” Tony says. “He’s kind of crazy now. Even crazier than before, I mean. I think he’s losing it.”

Mickey shivers a little. “Fuck,” he sighs. “That can’t be good. What if he comes looking for me?”

“Honestly?” Tony shrugs. “I think you could take him.”

“Yeah, right,” Mickey snorts disbelievingly. “Guy’s gotta be the most powerful warlock in the country. Maybe the whole fuckin’ continent.”

His brothers exchange somewhat confused looks.

“Nuh-uh,” Jamie says slowly. “Not any more.”

Mickey stares at him, then around the circle for clarification. He’s relieved to find that Mandy looks as confused as he does. “Fuck are you talking about?” he asks.

“He’s kinda weak now,” Iggy pipes up. “I mean, I think he was only so tough ‘cause he had all of us.”

“So, what… you all cut him off or something?”

Iggy shrugs. “Not, like, deliberately. I guess we just kind of drifted off. Started avoiding him. And the more we stayed away, the crazier and weaker he got.”

“Why’d you drift away? When the fuck did all this happen?”

But as Mickey asks, he realizes that he already knows the answer. He knows it by the meaningful glances his brothers exchange. He can guess that the family fell apart about a hundred years ago. After his father caught him. After his father burned him. After his father cast him out.

“We, uh. Not long after, we found out what he did to you, too,” Tony says at last, directing the statement at Mandy, who suddenly looks defensive and cornered.

“Shit is fucked, man,” Joey says darkly. “He goes nuts on Mickey for banging some dude, meanwhile he’s…”

Mickey kicks Joey sharply in the ankle to get him to stop talking, because Mandy looks like she’s on the verge of either crying or punching someone. Maybe both.

“Point is,” Tony says, clearly trying to get things back on a safer path. “Dad screwed himself. I mean, I ain’t a good guy. None of us are. But we got limits, and there’s shit you don’t do. Not to family.”

They carry on drinking and talking for a while after that, but Mickey struggles to pay attention to the conversation in the wake of what he’s just learned. He’d always kind of assumed that his brothers would side with his father - that they’d be disgusted to learn that their brother was a faggot who liked getting sodomized. He wasted so many years avoiding his family. He stayed away for so long that he wouldn’t blame them for turning their backs on him. Yet when his life fell apart, they all showed up to help him rebuild it. It’s too much for Mickey to process.

They all crash in Mickey’s newly-built house that night, and leave one by one the next morning. Mickey claps them awkwardly on the shoulders and shakes their hands and tells them to come back and visit, and he actually kind of hopes that they will. He hadn’t realized how much he missed his brothers until he saw them again.

Mandy is the last to go, and she takes the wyvern with her - to go to the mountains. There’s a cave there where it can make its nest, she says, and plenty of other wyverns living in the area. Perhaps even enough that, with time, they’ll be able to build their numbers back up.

The wyvern is old enough now to have lost any lingering attachment to its “mother,” but Ian still emerges from the sunbeam he was sleeping in to see it off. He stretches nonchalantly, then rubs his body against the creature’s scaly legs, purring deeply. The wyvern dips its head down to sniff at the cat, and then nudges it with its snout. Ian staggers clumsily and then stalks away with his head held high.

“So…” Mickey is kind of at a loss for what to say to Mandy. Last night’s conversation stills weighs heavily on their minds. “Thanks. For everything. See you ‘round, I guess.”

To his surprise, Mandy grabs him and pulls him into a tight hug, her long hair tickling his face. Mickey hesitates, then wraps his arms around her and hugs her back. It feels… nice. Weird, but nice.

“See you ‘round, Mick,” she says when they finally break apart, her eyes suspiciously damp. Then she grabs the wyvern’s tether, and the two of them disappear into the forest.

* * *

Strangely, Ian finds himself less afraid of Mickey after the beating. Before he really had no idea what the witch was capable of, but now he knows first-hand what it will feel like if Mickey ever really, truly tries to kill him.

However, the lack of fear doesn’t equate to a lack of resentment. Whatever tendrils of friendliness and common understanding might have begun to form between them have been thoroughly decimated by Mickey’s fit of rage, and Ian treats his master with cool detachment - obeying instructions and carrying out chores, but otherwise spending as little time engaging with Mickey as possible.

After a while he can tell that this is starting to bother Mickey, who keeps trying to goad Ian into arguing with him or fighting back. The witch seems agitated by the memory of his own violence, and wants to try and get things back to the way they were - as if the beating never happened. But it _did_ happen, and Ian has no intention of letting Mickey forget it.

Besides, Ian is a _slave_. Mickey is his captor; his enemy. Mickey is the only thing standing between Ian and freedom, and Ian has no intention of spending the next ninety years of his life at the beck and call of a bad-tempered witch. He can’t risk getting too comfortable with this life, or developing sympathy for Mickey. He needs to think of Mickey as an obstacle, not as a human being.

It’s not always easy. As the air grows cooler and fall turns to winter, Mickey arranges a pile of cushions and blankets in the corner of the kitchen for Ian to sleep on. Ian pointedly ignored the comfortable-looking arrangement and sleeps curled up outside, or on the cold slate floor of the kitchen. Then one day, as Ian is eating the scraps of Mickey’s dinner from a bowl, the witch casually reaches down and strokes the fur on his back.

Ian relaxes into the touch - just for a moment - before he remembers himself. Then he stiffens, all of his fur standing on end, and he whips his head around and hisses furiously in warning. Mickey pulls his hand back in alarm, and Ian stays flattened to the floor for a few more seconds, growling and glaring. When he’s finally satisfied that Mickey’s got the message, he stalks away - leaving the rest of the food behind.

He’s not a fucking pet. He’s not a faithful servant. He’s not a cat, or a toad, or any other fucking thing that Mickey might decide to turn him into. He’s a human being who has been taken prisoner by the enemy, and he can’t ever let himself forget it.

It’s not until several weeks after the wyvern’s departure that Ian finally starts to concoct a real plan for escape. Mickey goes out for the day and leaves Ian behind in human form, with instructions to clean the house (Ian suspects that there’s probably a way to do this with magic, and Mickey just wants to make his life miserable). The chores don’t actually take too long, however, so Ian decides to take advantage of Mickey’s absence and indulge in something that he hasn’t experienced since he was captured: a hot bath.

Just drawing the bath takes well over two hours, as Ian laboriously draws water from the well, then brings it inside to heat it over the fire, then pours the steaming water into Mickey’s metal bathtub (when Mickey bathes, which is rare, he always heats the water with magic). When the tub is finally full, Ian strips and then sinks into the almost-too-hot water, groaning in pleasure as it warms his skin and soothes his aching joints and muscles. The fireplace crackles soothingly nearby, and Ian closes his eyes and breathes in steam and imagines that he’s back in his own home, relaxing after a long day of hunting.

He’s jerked out of a pleasant doze by the sound of the garden gate closing, and sits up in alarm, splashing lukewarm water onto the floor.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he curses, as footsteps approach outside.

Before he can do anything, however, the front door is bursting open and Mickey is walking in, looking tired and irritated. He stops abruptly at the sight of Ian in the tub, apparently stunned.

“What the shit is this?” he snaps. “You think this is a spa?”

Ian clenches his jaw, his good mood thoroughly chased away. “I finished cleaning the house. I wanted a bath,” he explains in clipped tones.

“Yeah, and you spilled fuckin’ water all over the floor. You’re cleaning that up next.” Mickey sighs and scrubs a hand over his head. “Well shit, might as well make the most of it. Get the fuck out.”

Ian stands up and climbs out of the tub resentfully, secretly daring Mickey to complain about the additional mess he makes as the water courses down his body and pools around his feet. But the witch is silent as Ian grabs the length of linen that he set aside earlier and starts to dry himself off. When Ian glances around, he swears that he sees Mickey abruptly turning his head away before busying himself with taking off his shirt.

Ian settles down by the fire, watching Mickey out of the corner of his eye. The witch touches the rim of the tub and mutters under his breath, and steam starts to rise from the water again. Then Mickey sits down on a stool to pull off his boots and socks, before unlacing his breeches and taking them off as well.

It’s been a long, long time since Ian last had sex, and there isn’t exactly a lot of stimulation around, so he continues to eye Mickey discreetly. He may be short, but he has a nice body - strong, but not sculpted, so the modest bulk of his muscles is covered by flesh that looks deliciously pliant. His skin is pale and easily marked, as evidenced by the random bruises that dot Mickey’s arms and legs, and the way his face flushes easily from the steam of the bath. He seems to be deliberately keeping his body angled away, so Ian can’t see his cock, but that just offers a rather pleasant view of his ass instead.

Ian is so preoccupied with documenting all of this that he forgets to be discreet about it, and Mickey glances around and catches him staring. In an echo of Mickey’s earlier behavior Ian looks away quickly - too quickly. The atmosphere suddenly grows tense, the house eerily quiet, but a few moments later Ian hears the soft splashing sound of Mickey climbing into the bath.

The witch groans as he fully submerges himself, just like Ian did. Apparently whatever he was doing out in the forest exhausted him, because it isn’t long before he too starts to doze off in the warm water - allowing Ian to stare at him unashamedly. His long-neglected cock stirs a little at the sight of all that lovely, pale, bare flesh, and an idea starts to form in Ian’s mind.

Until now, he’s been trying to find a way to break free by force. After all, he's gotten into the habit of dealing with every problem through battle. But maybe, just maybe, there might be a better means of escape.


	11. Chapter 11

It happens by degrees - so subtly at first that Mickey is convinced he’s just imagining things.

After he stumbles on Ian secretly indulging in a bath, it takes about a week for him to stop picturing those fat water droplets rolling down Ian’s toned torso towards his groin. But now that it’s winter there’s a greater need for firewood, and Mickey keeps catching sight of Ian out in the garden, heaving the axe over his head with a grunt and bringing it down with a powerful _crack_ that splits the logs like they were merely toothpicks. It’s a view that’s hard to look away from.

Then, despite his earlier hostility, Ian starts allowing Mickey to pet him while he’s in cat form - even rubbing up against Mickey’s legs in a show of apparent affection. He ignores the nest of blankets downstairs, and starts sleeping at the foot of Mickey’s bed, and then even _on_ the bed.

And when Ian is in human form, Mickey seems to keep catching sight of him stretching, or cracking his neck, or moving in other ways that emphasize his muscles and his long limbs. He sprawls out in front of the fire after meals, scratching his belly in a way that inches his shirt up and exposes the skin of his lower stomach, and the trail of ginger hair that leads into his breeches.

Mickey is torn between confronting Ian about this behavior and trying to ignore it - because if it turns out that Ian’s not doing it on purpose, that Mickey is just unusually horny and imagining things, then any conversation they have could end up being hugely embarrassing. And besides, what’s he supposed to accuse Ian of? Looking good in firelight? Chopping wood provocatively? Ridiculous.

But one day Mickey returns from patrolling the woods to find Ian kneeling in front of a tub of soapy water, shirtless, the muscles in his back flexing rhythmically as he scrubs one of Mickey’s shirts over a washboard and Mickey… snaps.

“Alright,” he snaps. “What the fuck are you trying to do?”

Ian glances around at him with an innocent expression. “Getting the stains out of this shirt.”

“No, I mean what the fuck are you _doing?_ With all the fucking posing and shit. Don’t fucking try and tell me I’m imagining it, you’ve been at it for days now.”

Ian drops the shirt into the water and stands up abruptly, towering over Mickey as he steps closer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, but there’s a smile playing at the corners of his mouth that makes Mickey furious and aroused in equal measure.

“If this is your way of fucking with me because you found out that I’m a fag, you can cut that shit out. It ain’t working.”

“No?” Ian takes a step closer, his eyelids lowered, his gaze flicking down to Mickey’s mouth in a way that makes Mickey feel hot all over.

“You’d better back the fuck…”

Ian grabs Mickey’s nipple through his shirt.

It happens too fast for Mickey to react, and it utterly derails him. His mouth drops open in shock at the sheer brazenness of it. He should push Ian away, yell at him, punish him for the insubordination. But then Ian tightens his grip and tugs upwards in a way that rubs the coarse material of Mickey’s shirt against the tender nub of his nipple, and that predatory smile widens, and a hot throb of arousal shoots down Mickey’s chest to his groin.

“Fuck,” Ian murmurs. “You’re so sensitive.”

Mickey tries to work enough saliva into his mouth for a sarcastic retort, but the rough, borderline-painful treatment his nipple is getting keeps knocking down every coherent thought he tries to form.

“How long’s it been?” Ian asks - still speaking in that low, husky tone.

“F-fuck you,” Mickey stammers, relieved that he managed to avoid saying _fuck me_ instead.

“I bet it’s been years,” Ian continues, stepping closer, dipping his head down to whisper directly in Mickey’s ear. “I bet sometimes you want it so bad you can’t fucking stand it.”

He squeezes Mickey’s nipple _hard_ then, and Mickey grunts and grimaces in pain, while also arching into the touch. Then, quite suddenly, Ian’s hand is gone. He’s kneeling down again and picking up Mickey’s soapy shirt and scrubbing it against the washboard like nothing happened.

Mickey stares down at him, completely wrongfooted. His nipple is sore underneath his shirt, sending sparks of stimulation to his brain like it’s demanding to know what the hell just happened. But Mickey doesn’t know. He has no fucking idea.

* * *

The tenderness lasts for a couple of days, and though he would never admit it, Mickey misses it when it’s gone. But it’s not the last such incident. Just when he thinks that things are getting back to normal, Ian grabs him as he’s heading out of the house and crowds him up against the door. It sends a thrill of excitement up Mickey’s spine, which is compounded when Ian slides his hand up Mickey’s shirt and then scratches his nails down Mickey’s stomach. It’s over almost as soon as it begins, but Mickey is left with marks that last for days, and which spark memories of the interaction every time his shirt brushes against them.

He could turn Ian into a cat or toad and keep him in that form. He could add another hundred years to Ian’s sentence. He could yell at Ian, warn him to stop, threaten death and injury. He could even beat Ian for his insolence, if he were so inclined. But Mickey does none of these things because…

Because he doesn’t want it to stop.

He starts letting Ian stay in human form all the time, and he’s rewarded with more interactions. One time Ian grabs his hips and presses his whole body up against Mickey’s back, then dips his head down and bites the join of Mickey’s neck and shoulder roughly. Mickey makes a helpless noise of frustration and pain and arousal, but then Ian shoves him away again and walks off.

His touches - if they can be called that - are nothing like what Mickey had with Simon. Simon used to brush his hands lightly and lovingly over Mickey’s skin, and whisper sweet things in his ear, and kiss Mickey slowly and softly. When Ian touches Mickey it comes out of nowhere and hits him hard and leaves him disoriented and horny and covered in small bruises and scratches. He presses his fingers against them secretly at night, and gets hard under the blankets. It’s confusing, and exciting, and Mickey wants _more_.

He tries to draw the line - he does - on the night that Ian first crawls into his bed in human form.

“Oh no,” Mickey says warningly, when he feels the heavy dip in the mattress next to him. “Get the fuck out, this is my bed.”

“I’m freezing,” Ian whines. “And it’s a king-size bed, there’s more than enough room.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing but…”

“Shhh, I’m trying to sleep.”

Mickey squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth. “Are you even…” he starts, but isn’t sure how to phrase the question. Even so, Ian seems to understand what he’s asking.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I’ve known since I was ten. It’s why the sisters used to beat me so much. They kept catching me fooling around with the other boys in the orphanage.”

Despite the cold winter night, Mickey suddenly feels hot under the blanket. “What about me?” he asks. “Are you actually into me, or are you just fucking with me because you hate me?”

Ian’s hand creeps over the bed, comes to rest on Mickey’s arm. Mickey finally gives in and lets his head roll over to look at his familiar. Ian’s face is softly lit by the lantern on the bedside table, his expression unreadable. “Does it matter?” he asks softly.

Mickey’s brows knit together in frustration.

“Take your shirt off,” Ian commands softly.

And Mickey doesn’t take orders from Ian, he _doesn’t_. But after a loaded pause he sits up, and he pulls his shirt up and over his head, and then he lies back down and waits, his torso bare and vulnerable.

Ian’s gaze drops down to Mickey’s naked skin. He touches Mickey’s stomach with just the tips of his fingers, then flattens his palm over it, teasing the fading scratch marks he left behind.

“You like it rough?” he asks, the question sending a jolt straight to Mickey’s cock, which is already getting hard inside his nightclothes. “Or do you like it gentle?”

“I…”

"You don’t have to choose.”

Horrifyingly, Mickey lets out an actual sob then. He’s confused and hopelessly turned on, and he’s aching inside from how badly he wants to be fucked. He managed to ignore his urges for years, but it was easy enough when there wasn’t a flesh-and-blood man in his bed, stroking his skin and asking him questions about what he likes in bed. Mickey doesn’t want to answer; he wants Ian to tell him what he wants - what he’s going to get. He wants Ian to treat him rough, or treat him gentle. He wants whatever Ian wants to give him.

“Do you want me to stop?” Ian murmurs, his breath brushing the skin of Mickey’s shoulder.

“No!” Mickey groans - because if he’s certain of anything, he’s certain of that.

Ian moves fast. He sits up, and he manhandles Mickey over onto his stomach and rips his nightclothes down, baring his ass. He grabs the back of Mickey’s neck and holds him down against the bed and then hits him - a sharp blow of the flat of his hand to the fat of Mickey’s right buttock. Mickey jerks and sucks in huge gasps of breath at the treatment, and then Ian’s moving to lie down on top of him, pinning Mickey to the mattress.

“You wanna know if I want you?” he demands, muttering the words right into Mickey’s ear. “What do you think?”

Ian is rock-hard, his cock riding the dip between Mickey’s ass cheeks, and he’s _big_. Fuck, he’s so big. Maybe bigger than anyone Mickey’s ever been with. What’s more, he definitely wasn’t lying about having done this before. He’s rolling his hips slowly, expertly, in such a way that if they were fucking his cock would be hitting Mickey in all the right places.

“Do you want me to fuck you, Mickey?” he asks.

Mickey groans helplessly into the pillow.

“Do you?” Ian persists, raking his fingernails over Mickey’s hips.

“Yeah,” Mickey breathes. “Yeah.”

“Say it. I wanna hear you say it.”

His cock is grinding hard against Mickey’s ass, and the ache has built to a crescendo now, like Mickey might die if Ian doesn’t shove his cock in there soon. “Fuck me,” Mickey whines, shamefully. “Just fuck me.”

Ian makes a pleased, lustful sound. “You want me inside you?” he presses.

“Yeah…”

“You want me to fuck you, nice and slow?”

Mickey presses his face against the bed to muffle his voice, but nods vigorously.

Ian’s leaning his whole weight on Mickey’s back now, so hard that Mickey can barely breathe. He grabs Mickey’s wrists, pins them to the pillow and whispers in his ear: “Then let me go, and I’ll fuck you.”

It takes Mickey’s stupid, lust-addled brain a moment to process that request, because it doesn’t make _sense_ , because Ian’s the one who’s got him trapped. But then, after a few seconds, he realizes what Ian’s asking.

“You know how badly you want to get fucked right now?” Ian continues, still rolling his hips slowly. “That’s how bad I want to be free. That’s how bad I want go home. Not just now, but all the time. So now you know how it fuckin’ feels.”

Mickey turns his head, freeing his mouth to spit, “You’re a fucking _psycho_.”

Ian kisses his cheek tenderly, like a lover, then slides his lips back to the shell of Mickey’s ear and carries on in a coaxing voice. “You can get what you want. All you have to do is take this thing off my neck, and let me go, and I’ll fuck you. I’ll only fuck you once, but it’ll be the best fuck of your life.”

“You got a pretty big fuckin’ opinion of yourself,” Mickey snarls, furious that he fell for this gambit, furious that even now he’s still not trying to push Ian away.

Ian chuckles. “It’s well-earned, trust me. Or actually, you don’t have to trust me. I can show you. All you gotta do is let me go.”

Mickey screws up every scrap of pride and resolve this he has left, grits his teeth, and snarls, “ _No._ ”

There’s a beat. Then, suddenly, Ian is gone and Mickey is left exposed to the freezing night air. He rolls over onto his back, gasping for air, and then sits up to see Ian sitting on the end of the bed, pulling his rumpled clothes into place.

“You _bastard_ ,” Mickey spits, even though he knows he’s in no position to be morally outraged.

Ian shrugs, turns his head enough so that Mickey can see the side of his face. “I never claimed to be a good person,” he says calmly. And then he stands up and goes downstairs, leaving Mickey cold and alone and thoroughly blue-balled.


	12. Chapter 12

It’s kind of disgusting, but even being confronted with Ian’s ultimatum isn’t enough to make Mickey spurn his familiar’s advances. Even knowing that it won’t go anywhere, it feels so good to be touched - and Ian gets simultaneously more gentle and more ruthless with his approach. He’ll rest his hand on Mickey’s shoulder and whisper in his ear, or casually graze his fingers over the back of Mickey’s hand while they’re eating. He’ll stand too close and smile down at Mickey with that cocky grin of his, or tenderly brush stray locks of hair from Mickey’s forehead. It’s overwhelming, and intoxicating, and even knowing that it’s all a lie doesn’t prevent Mickey from slowly becoming infatuated with Ian.

He never touches him back - never curves his hand around the firm line of Ian’s jaw or the bulge of his bicep like he longs to do. But Mickey leans helplessly into Ian’s hands when they’re on him, and he watches his familiar discreetly, whenever he can get away with it. He lets Ian stay in human form almost all the time, and so he gets to know Ian’s dry wit and his amused smirk and the irritated crease between his brows that appears when he’s faced with a difficult task.

Mickey gradually harvests more details about Ian’s life - like the fact that he joined a city gang after leaving the orphanage, and learned to fight. He was spotted brawling with a rival gang by a passing monster-hunter, who was impressed by Ian’s verve and took him in as an apprentice. Ian left after two years, stealing a contract out from under his former master as he left, and after that he struck out on his own - eventually choosing the village on the edge of the forest as his base of operations.

It still disgusts Mickey to hear Ian talk about the monsters he’s killed, and it’s an important reminder of why he can’t set his familiar free - not even for the promise of the best fuck of his life. If Ian is allowed to leave, he’ll resume slaughtering the magical creatures of the forest for money, until they’re all wiped out. Mickey doesn’t need more blood on his conscience.

Before long, he can tell that Ian is starting to get frustrated. He must realize that Mickey is falling for him, and yet the amulet remains firmly around his neck. He starts getting rougher again - pushing Mickey up against walls and grabbing his hair, whispering filthy suggestions through gritted teeth. Mickey lets himself believe that part of Ian’s frustration stems from desire. He lets himself believe that Ian wants to fuck him just as badly as Mickey wants to be fucked.

This dance goes on for months. The winter gives way to spring and the forest explodes with green leaves and flower blossoms and newborn creatures.

Mickey spends an exhausting night in the goat pen, helping one of the female goats as she gives birth to twins. One of them is stillborn, and Ian emerges sleepily from the house in the morning to find Mickey sitting cross-legged in the mud, covering his face with his hands as the mother goat nudges the sad, slimy bundle with her nose and bleats in distress.

Mickey finally pulls himself together and wraps the dead kid in a bundle, carrying it out into the woods so that the animals can feed on the carcass. When he returns to the house, the mother goat seems to have forgotten that she ever had twins, and is happily licking the surviving kid clean as it stands up on wobbly legs.

Ian is re-thatching a part of the roof that was damaged in a winter storm, and he looks down at Mickey as he returns. He’s too far away for Mickey to make out his expression, which hopefully means that Ian can’t see the bloodshot whites of Mickey’s eyes either.

But later, as Mickey is sitting in front of the fire and carefully pressing leaves into a book, Ian says softly from behind him, “You really care about them, don’t you? The animals, I mean. Even goats.”

Mickey half-glances back at him. “Even goats,” he confirms quietly.

And after that, for reasons known only to himself, Ian stops trying to seduce Mickey. He stops touching him, and cornering him, and flirting with him. Mickey isn’t so stupid as to believe that Ian has given up trying to escape his 90-year sentence, but apparently he’s decided that there are better ways to go about it.

* * *

Mickey sets him free in the summer.

He and Ian are out in the woods, doing the usual rounds, when they stumble across the remains of a cockatrice and a small band of kikimores. Tiptoeing carefully around the stray limbs and guts, Mickey crouches down to inspect the markings on the cockatrice, a troubled frown on his brow.

“I’ve never seen this family in the forest before,” he comments.

Ian walks over to join him, squatting on the other side of the corpse. “Before I left, they were talking about reopening the mines,” he comments. “Maybe they disturbed its nest, and it was looking for a new one.”

Mickey’s mouth twists bitterly. “Fuckers,” he seethes.

Ian shrugs. “The mine belongs to…”

“It’s not a fucking mine,” Mickey snaps. “It’s a cave system that they took explosives and pickaxes into. It didn’t belong to anyone before they came along and decided it was theirs.”

“So? Survival of the fittest, right?”

Sometimes, it’s very easy to remember why Mickey hated Ian in the first place.

He extracts samples from the kikimores and cockatrices, for their alchemical value, and stows them away in his bag before continuing the patrol. The air is sticky and humid under the canopy of leaves, and before long both Ian and Mickey are drenched in sweat and batting away annoying, buzzing insects.

Eventually they reach the river and Mickey concedes to Ian’s whining pleas for a rest. They sit on the large rocks by a waterfall and watch a group of drowners cavorting around a pot-bellied water hag some way upstream. They’re only really dangerous in close quarters - preferring to feed on carrion and rotting scraps - but they’re almost fascinatingly ugly with their bulbous eyes and blue scales.

“Even them?” Ian asks, pointing at the drowners. “You think they’re precious little creatures of the earth?” He’s obviously mocking, but also sounds a little curious.

Mickey watches the drowners splashing around stupidly. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “They might be fuckin’ ugly, but they do less harm than humans. They live off rotting corpses. They rarely kill. Their faecal matter helps fertilize water plants. They shed their scales every season, and you can use the scales in healing potions.”

“Please promise me, no matter how badly I get hurt, that you’ll never give me a potion made out of drowner scales.”

Mickey glares at him, and Ian grins back - the opportunity to explore beyond the garden walls apparently having put him in an unusually good mood. Abruptly, he announces that he feels like going for a swim, and starts pulling his clothes off before Mickey can object.

As Ian’s smooth, freckled skin is exposed, Mickey watches idly. He doesn’t try to hide it any more; Ian knows all too well how he feels. He admires the muscles in Ian’s back, and his hairy legs, and his large cock. And then Ian turns around, and Mickey gets a good look at his rear for the first time.

_You should see my ass._

His buttocks are as tightly muscled as the rest of him, but they’re marred by a lattice of deep scars - obviously acquired over many years. Some are old, and some are relatively new. Some are thick, some are thin. Ian’s scars are the product of an entire childhood of beatings, and Mickey hadn’t realized just how severe those beatings must have been.

And it's then that Mickey realizes that no matter how badly he treats Ian, no matter how many years he keeps him prisoner, Ian will never break. Ian got caught fooling around with his fellow orphan boys, and was beaten bloody for it, and then went back and did it again. And again. And again. Mickey won’t be able to make him see the error of his monster-killing ways, any more than the nuns could make him see the error of being a faggot.

Mickey thinks about the dead wyvern, and the dead cockatrice, and the dead kikimores, and he’s suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of grief and helplessness. Keeping a single monster-hunter locked up won’t save the creatures of the forest. Ian is a prisoner of a war that Mickey’s already lost.

Ian is ankle-deep in the water, humming at the pleasant coolness of the rushing river on his skin, when Mickey walks over and rests a hand on the warm, bare skin of Ian’s shoulder. He indulges in it, just for a moment. Just long enough for Ian to look around in confusion. Then Mickey slides his fingers over to the knot holding the talisman in place, and mutters a spell under his breath. The leather string abruptly breaks, and Mickey flips the amulet up into his hand, turns around, and hurls it as far as he can. It lands in the rushing river with a soft splash, and disappears from view.

Mickey has seen it before - the behavior that Ian exhibits after the amulet is removed. He’s seen it in animals that he’s nursed back to health and then released into the wild. It’s the moment where they’re free, but they haven’t quite realized it yet.

Ian stands in the river, touching the place on his collarbone where the amulet used to lie. Then he looks up at Mickey, confusion knitting his eyebrows together.

“Oh,” he says. “Fuck.”

Mickey turns abruptly and starts walking away. After a few seconds, he hears Ian’s footsteps behind him.

“Hey, uh…”

Mickey looks back. Ian is still unabashedly naked, and scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

“Did you want me to…?”

“Did I want you to what?” Mickey echoes, the words razor-sharp.

Ian grins nervously. “You know. Fuck you?”

Mickey’s mouth twists bitterly. “Go home, Ian.”

He doesn’t want his former familiar to keep following him, so he gathers the shadows and shades of the forest around him and disappears from view. It’s not invisibility, not exactly, but it leaves Ian looking around in confusion, unable to pick Mickey out from the backdrop of the forest.

It breaks his heart - he fucking hates that he does, but it breaks Mickey’s fucking heart to walk away right then. Even though he knows that anything he might have felt for Ian was unreciprocated, and that it was merely the result of Ian’s manipulation, it hurts so much to know that Mickey will probably never see him again. Ian will resume his career killing monsters. He’ll grow old and grey, or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll die in battle. Either way, Mickey will outlive him, and he’ll carry on living until he’s the only person in the world who still remembers the name Ian Gallagher.


	13. Chapter 13

_Nine years later…_

_-_

The pub is crowded and poorly-lit - the perfect place for Ian to meet his clients. A lot of the jobs he takes are legit and above-board, but from the way he was approached for this one (a note slipped into his hand as he walked through the marketplace, naming a place and a time) he figures it’s very much below-board.

He walks right to the back of the pub, as instructed, and finds a man sitting in the booth there, an expensive-looking blue hood pulled up over his head. Ian rolls his eyes.

“If you were going for inconspicuous, you fucked up,” he comments, by way of greeting.

“Better to look suspicious than to look familiar,” the man replies, lifting his head slightly.

Ian smirks and slides into the booth, keeping one hand on the pommel of his sword to guide it into a comfortable position as he sits. In the dim light he can make out the strong jaw and sharp cheekbones of the man in front of him - enough to stir Ian’s interest, and not just in the job.

“I’m guessing you’re not looking for a bouncer for your daughter’s birthday party,” Ian comments drily.

“Not exactly,” the man concedes. “The job’s a jailbreak.”

Ian raises an eyebrow. “In this city? You’ve seen the prison, right?”

“I can pay.”

“You want me to break someone out of that prison, you’ll need to contribute more than money. This is a two-man job, at least.”

The man glances around them, and then lays his hand flat on the table. He murmurs a few words under his breath, and frost starts to spread across the table beneath his fingers. Then, quickly, he wipes it away.

He has Ian’s attention. “Using magic in public? You gotta be desperate. Who are we breaking out?”

“An old friend,” the stranger replies, with just enough of a pause between the second and third words for Ian to file the detail away for future reference. “He’s due to be executed tomorrow.”

“Shit, man, that’s not a lot of time.” Ian is already formulating and casting aside plans in his head. “Security’s always extra tight the day before an execution. It’s when prisoners are most likely to make a break for it.”

“Can you do it or not?” the man asks brusquely. “They told me you were the best.”

It’s shameless manipulation, but even knowing that doesn’t prevent Ian from bristling at the perceived slight. “I am the best,” he snaps quietly. “I’m the best because I know all this shit. You wanna hire me or not?”

“I am desperate,” the man confirms heavily. “Of course you’re hired.”

“Good, so…” Ian leans across the table - ostensibly for more privacy, but really because he wants a better look at the man under the hood. “Who is it we’re busting out?”

The man lifts his head to check their surroundings and _damn,_ he’s a good-looking motherfucker. But all thought of that goes out of his head when the stranger turns back to him and says, “Mickey Milkovich.”

Ian stares at him for a moment, as the name brings faint memories suddenly flooding back. He leans back in his seat, trying to process the situation.

“He’s a witch…”

“I know who he is.” Ian rubs his thumb along his bottom lip. “They’re executing him?” he asks softly.

“Not if I can help it.”

Ian nods slowly. Then he says, “Two hundred.”

The stranger looks surprised. “I heard your usual price is three hundred.”

“Wow, you’re shit at negotiating. You get a lowball offer, you take it.” Ian scrubs a hand through his hair impatiently. “What can I say, I’m moved by your… plight, or whatever. We got a deal or not?”

The man nods eagerly. “We have a deal.”

Ian spits into his hand and holds it out. The stranger looks faintly disgusted, but mimics him and shakes Ian’s hand firmly.

Squeezing his fingers back, Ian looks into the man’s eyes and asks, “What’s your name?”

“Simon.”

* * *

Mickey tries for the about the sixtieth time, unsuccessfully, to work the shackles off his wrists. They’re no ordinary design; they keep his magic bound up tight and out of his reach, and he feels naked and vulnerable without it. If he stood up now, he would be able to see the guards stacking dry wood and kindling around the stakes in the courtyard, through the bars of his cell. As it is, he can hear them joking about the smell of roasted witch.

Things had gotten worse much faster than Mickey had anticipated. The general hatred for magical creatures had expanded to include witches and warlocks as well. Suddenly, using magic in public became a capital crime, and using magic to protect a trio of water nymphs from an angry mob and give them enough time to get away… well, that earned you a beating before your burning.

He ought to be scared, but instead Mickey is just impotently furious - at wretched mankind for killing anything they don’t understand, and at himself for allowing them to capture him. And…

And Mickey _is_ scared, OK? He’s terrified. He’s so frightened that he’s already thrown up twice every scrap of his last supper, and he still feels sick because they’re going to _burn_ him. And unlike most people who get burned at the stake, Mickey already knows the horrors he’s about to experience. He knows what it will feel like when the flames lick his skin. He knows what it will feel like when his fat crackles and melts in the heat. He’s going to die forcibly reliving his very worst memory, and he’s seriously considering bashing his skull in on the walls of the prison just to avoid that terrible fate.

Mickey’s hands hurt. They’re shackled to the wall above his head, and whenever he slumps down to sleep it strains his back and shoulders terribly. He’s grown so used to using magic to chase away odd aches and pains that he’s become soft and unable to deal with them. To make matters worse, the loss of his magic has also stripped away the glamor from his scars, leaving them ugly and exposed.

Just as he’s giving the back of his head a few practice taps against the stones of the wall, trying to work up the nerve to really bash his brains in, Mickey hears a soft rush of movement in the passageway outside his cell. He listens carefully, on immediate alert, and clenches his numb hands into fists.

There’s the swish of a familiar blue cloak outside his cell, and then Mickey’s stomach swoops in relief and anxiety. “Simon?” he whispers.

Strong, clever fingers wrap around the bars. “Yeah, it’s me, Mikhailo.”

Mickey could kiss him. Mickey _will_ kiss him, when he gets out of here. And then punch him, probably. “What the fuck are you _doing_ here?” he demands. “What if they catch you too?”

“They won’t, not if we get out of here fast.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” someone interjects sharply. Mickey peers into the shadows behind Simon and sees another man standing there. His face is shrouded in darkness, but his voice sounds vaguely familiar.

Hurriedly, Simon mutters a spell and the lock for Mickey’s cell grinds open. The warlock shoves through the gate, which protests with a quiet clanging noise, and drops to his knees in front of Mickey, fumbling with the shackles at his wrists.

“Oh, Mikhailo,” he murmurs, when he gets close enough to see the bruises and blood on Mickey’s face. “What did they do to you?”

“I’ve had worse,” Mickey replies truthfully.

The shackles click open and Mickey grimaces, baring his teeth, as his arms drop down and he feels a sudden, agonizing rush of pins and needles. Simon gathers Mickey’s cold fingers to his mouth and kisses them, private and tender. Mickey smiles at him weakly.

“We gotta go,” the man at the door says urgently. Mickey looks up at him and his stomach churns for the second time in the space of less than a minute, because the man at the door is Ian Gallagher.

The dim light of encroaching dawn illuminates his somewhat messy red hair and the angles of his face, now set into a serious expression. He’s older now - his body firmer and a little broader, and his face no longer softened by the final stages of adolescence - but he’s still instantly recognizable as the man that Mickey kept imprisoned for a year, almost a decade ago now.

But even in his state of shock, Mickey knows better than to start the catch-up conversation now. So instead of exclaiming Ian’s name, he lets Simon pull him to his feet, slinging Mickey’s arm around his shoulders. Ian glances over his shoulder, pulling a face at the sound of distant voices and the faint illumination of torchlight. “C’mon, c’mon…” he mutters, one hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it.

Simon and Mickey reach the door, and Simon hastily casts a spell to hide them from view as they hurry down the corridor, away from the approaching guards. They go down, down - down to the little-known sewer entrance that Ian’s contact advised them of, and then they drop down a creaking metal ladder into the stinking water below.

“How did you…” Mickey begins.

“Chit-chat later,” Ian interrupts sharply. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

It takes them a full twenty minutes to escape the sewers, and Mickey thinks he might never get the stench out of his skin. They emerge, gasping for air, from a wide pipe that pours waste down the rocks and into the river below.

“I’ll turn us into birds or something,” Mickey says, though he’s barely staying conscious. He flexes his magic, and immediately doubles over in pain, crying out.

“Don’t, Mickey!” Simon says urgently.

“We need to get him back home,” Ian says, his face still wrinkled in disgust at the smell. “Back to the forest. He can recover there.”

Simon looks at Ian searchingly, then nods. “Alright,” he says. “Here, hold him.”

Carefully, he passes Mickey over to Ian. Mickey tries to stand up on his own two feet, but ends up sagging into Ian’s arms, watching distantly as Simon begins to draw glowing symbols in the air.

“You OK?” Ian murmurs, his mouth very close to Mickey’s ear.

Too exhausted to answer, Mickey simply nods.

“What a reunion, huh?”

Mickey chuckles weakly, half-delirious.

He passes out then, and when he wakes up he’s surrounded by the sweet smell of pine trees and the mossy forest floor, and Simon is whispering in his ear, “Mickey, you need to show us your house, we can’t find it without you.”

“Put him down,” Ian instructs, from somewhere nearby. “It’ll help, I think. If he can touch the ground, and the trees.”

Simon obliges, lowering Mickey to the ground and leaning him against the firm, ancient trunk of a tree. Mickey smooths his hands over the dirt, then sinks his fingers into it, reaching out to the forest. _Hello,_ he says in his mind. _Did you miss me?_

Warmth spreads up through his fingertips, clearing his vision and lifting his head. Mickey lets out a long sigh of relief, and tiny blades of grass start to grow up around where his fingers are buried in the soft soil. The forest embraces him, simultaneously like a parent and a child - worrying over his injuries and seeking reassurance.

After just a few minutes, Mickey finds that he has the strength to stand up by himself. He trails his fingers up the tree trunk as he does so, leaving tiny flowers in his wake, sprouting from the cracks in the bark. Nodding at Simon and Ian, he says. “Alright. This way.”


	14. Chapter 14

The first thing Mickey does when he gets home is check on his stupid animals.

The warlock - Simon, Mickey’s lover - tries to get him straight into the house, but Mickey breaks away and raids his vegetable garden and brings carrots and green beans for the goats to munch on. They bleat at him in a deafening chorus, their hooves scraping at the wood of the fence as they jostle around him. Mickey scratches their ears and lets them lick his fingers and whispers to them, and then he throws large handfuls of seed to the chickens. As he does this, he seems to grow stronger and more alert - his skin losing the unhealthy pallor it had acquired in the prison.

Ian glances over at Simon and sees him smiling fondly at the witch, his eyes soft. He catches Ian’s eye and Ian smiles too, surprising himself.

After visiting the goats and chickens, Mickey then goes and checks on his toads. There are a lot more of them than Ian remembers, and they seem much bigger than before. He vaguely remembers the little bastards bullying him away from the pond when he was Mickey’s familiar, and privately Ian thinks that he wouldn’t have minded if they’d all hopped off to their deaths while Mickey was away.

As Mickey refamiliarizes himself with his home, Ian wanders around, taking it all in. He finds Mickey’s old woodaxe stuck into a chopping block and curls his fingers around the handle, remembering all the hours he spent chopping firewood in the winter. He finds the old well, which now has ivy climbing up the weather-beaten metal pump. He kneels down and touches the hand-crafted herb markers that Mandy made, the letters now faded and blurred. The garden is rich with memories, coming back to Ian thick and fast.

In truth, the time he spent as Mickey’s familiar had started to feel like a distant dream - something that he could have feasibly imagined. The interim years have been filled with struggles and battles, but periodically Ian’s thoughts have always strayed back to the witch who captured him, and then released him eighty-nine years too early with no explanation. He came back to these woods many times, trying to track down Mickey’s house with some excuse or another in mind, but he was never able to find it again until now.

“Ian.”

He turns, and finds Simon standing behind him. He has his hood down now, and the face that looked somewhat severe in the dim lighting of the pub and the prison now looks a lot kinder - albeit no less handsome. His skin is light brown, his hair reddish-brown. He’s the same height as Ian, maybe a little taller, but with a slightly slimmer build.

“Mickey went inside,” Simon explains.

Ian nods, and decides to be candid. “I lived here for a year,” he says. “I used to be Mickey’s familiar.”

Simon smiles sheepishly. “I know. It’s why I asked you to help me break him out.”

Ian clutches at his chest in mock-offense. “I thought it’s because I was the best!”

“Ah, no. Actually, you might not want to go back to that city for a while. Seems a lot of people have grudges against you.”

“What can I say - I’m a lucky gambler.”

Simon chuckles, glances at the ground, then looks back at the house. “You know, he talks about you. Not often, but often enough.”

“You live here with him?” Ian asks, bluntly.

“Oh, no.” Simon shakes his head. “I live up north, with my partner. Mickey and I aren’t together. We used to be.”

“I figured.” Ian hesitates. “Your partner, is he…”

“She.”

 _Oh._ “Is she cool with you coming down here on a rescue mission for a guy you used to f… uh, be intimate with?”

Simon shrugs. “Of course. You have to understand, romance is a little different for witches and warlocks. When you live for hundreds of years, you tend not to have the usual hang-ups about fidelity and jealousy. She knows how much I loved Mickey. She knows how much it would hurt me if he died. I don’t think it would ever occur to her to stand in the way of me saving him.”

That was a little more information than Ian was really fishing for, but he nods politely all the same. “So, uh. I guess I should leave you two to get reacquainted.”

“Actually, I was about to say the same.” Simon glances towards the garden gate. “I really need to get back. And… I think you and Mickey should probably talk.”

Ian laughs nervously. “We’re not exactly friends. It was more of a master-slave relationship. And not in a sexy way.”

“Right.” Simon doesn’t sound at all convinced. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you stuck around for a little while, just to make sure he recovers.” He starts to walk away, then hesitates, and turns back. “Ian?”

“Yeah?”

“I know he doesn’t always make it easy, and you’ve got plenty of reason not to but… try to be kind to him?”

A dozen sarcastic retorts spring to Ian’s mind, but he consciously pushes them away and substitutes them with a single, stiff nod.

* * *

The first thing Mickey does when he gets inside the house is put the kettle on to boil, because he’s had a really fucking terrible week and he needs to feel somewhat normal. He sits down in an armchair by the fire and looks around his home, trying to remember what it would have looked like the last time Ian was here. Not so much clutter, that’s for sure. Not so many books or odd artifacts or hanging herbs.

The front door opens and Ian steps inside, looking at his surroundings before he even spares a glance for Mickey. “Holy shit,” he exclaims. “It’s so fuckin’ weird to be back here.”

He crosses to the fire and sits in the chair opposite Mickey, sticking his long legs out and resting them on the footstool. He’s wearing tough leather armor, trimmed with metal and heavily worn from travel and battle, and he has a dagger holstered at his ankle, another at his hip. He and Mickey eye each other carefully, with the air of two people staring at each other over a chessboard.

“Why’d you rescue me?” Mickey demands suddenly.

“Why’d you let me go?”

“I asked first, asshole.”

“Fine. I rescued you because I was paid to. Why’d you let me go?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Simon told me you gave him a pretty hefty discount for an extra dangerous job. So why’d you rescue me?”

“Because I wanted to ask why you let me go.” Ian grins.

 _Checkmate_ , Mickey thinks.

He looks away from Ian and stares into the fire, watching the gently swaying kettle as it boils. “Do you still want to kill me?” he asks. “You said that you would.”

Ian shrugs. “I said a lot of things. But I don’t kill unless I’m getting paid these days, so unless someone puts a bounty on your head, I guess you’re safe.”

“I’m pretty sure there is a bounty on my head.”

“Then I guess you’d better hope I don’t take the job.”

The kettle boils. The conversation lulls as Mickey pours the tea, adding a little sugar to Ian’s as he recalls that his familiar used to have a bit of a sweet tooth. Ian accepts the drink gratefully, wrapping his strong hands around the small cup.

“It was really fucked up, what you did to me,” he says quietly. “I was just a kid. Just trying to scrape a living. And you turned me into your slave. I’m not mad about it any more, but it was fucked up.”

Mickey plucks up the courage to look at Ian. The raw hurt on his usually impassive face is hard to look at. “Yeah,” he concedes. “Yeah, it was fucked up. I don’t know if you got the memo, but I ain’t a good person.”

Ian tilts his head in acknowledgment of the point, and takes a sip of his tea.

“I’m a great fuckin’ judge of character, though,” Mickey ventures carefully. The next sentence sticks in his throat, but he forces it out anyway. “I only… I only ever loved two guys. And last night they both showed up to save my life.”

He clenches his jaw, wills his face not to give him away.

“I know, alright,” he hastens to add. “I know you fucking conned me into falling in love with you. I know it was just a fuckin’ escape plan for you. But it was real for me.”

The firelight plays over Ian’s face, making it hard to read. “Is that why you let me go?” he queries, after a moment. “Because you loved me?”

Mickey considers this, and casts his mind back to the decision, trying to recall exactly what was going through his mind when he set Ian free. “Nah,” he says at last. “I just realized, I couldn’t teach you to see monsters the same way I do. I let you go because I knew I couldn’t change you.”

Ian stays quiet for a really long time then - so quiet that Mickey starts to wonder if he’s dozed off. Finally he says, “But you did.”

Mickey frowns at him questioningly.

“I mean, I still kill for money,” Ian explains hastily. “And fight for money. But only people, not monsters. I never killed another monster after you let me go. I worked as a trapper for a while - furs, you know? But in the end I became a mercenary. It’s steady work, and the pay’s OK. Plus, less chance of getting turned into a toad.”

He lifts his hand to his mouth and rubs his thumb over his lower lip, and Mickey realizes that he’s concealing a mischievous smile.

“You live in the city?” he asks Ian, his heartbeat suddenly quickening.

Ian shakes his head. “Nah. I’m kind of a drifter now. Go where the work takes me.”

“You wanna stay here for a bit?” Mickey offers, before he can overthink it. “I promise not to turn you into a toad.”

This time Ian smiles broadly, and doesn’t try to hide it. “Yeah, OK.”

Mickey licks his lips nervously. “You, uh. You wanna come upstairs?”

They go upstairs.

The orange light of sunrise is just starting to spill through the window shutters when Ian kisses Mickey for the first time. He leans in first, tentatively, using his finger to tilt Mickey’s face up, and then presses their lips together. When that kiss ends, his breath is quick and warm on Mickey’s mouth, and Mickey feels an instinctive need to kiss him again. He buries his fingers in Ian’s orange hair, presses his body up close, and chases Ian’s mouth just as it starts to move away.

Ian splays his hands over Mickey’s back and slides their tongues together with a confidence that leaves Mickey shaking. He skims his hand down to Ian’s chest, silently admiring the hard plane of muscle, and then reaches down to fumble with the ties of his breeches. Ian hurries to help, resting his forehead on Mickey’s and panting.

“I’ve thought about this,” he confesses in a clumsy, quiet rush. “I thought about you a lot. The way you felt under me. Your body… oh, Mick.”

Mickey groans, lets his head drop to Ian’s shoulder, sets his teeth into it warningly. “If you’ve got another fuckin’ ultimatum coming up…”

“No, no…” Ian slides his hands up and under Mickey’s shirt - the palms rough and callused. “This is real, I swear. This is me.”

They end up in the same king-size bed that Tony installed a decade ago - completely naked and uncoordinated in their eagerness. Ian has to hold Mickey’s hips still and take a few deep, calming breaths before he can continue.

“How…”

“Hard,” Mickey says firmly. “Slow, but hard.”

“Like this?” Ian shifts between Mickey’s legs, already nudging at his entrance.

“No, from behind. I like to be on my stomach.”

“Alright.”

They switch positions and Ian smooths his hands down Mickey’s sides, flattens his front against Mickey’s back, and then he eases in so slowly that Mickey has to bite down on the urge to tell him to hurry the hell up. It’s not until Ian’s fully seated inside him and brings his hand up to brace on Mickey’s shoulder that Mickey realizes he never pulled the glamor back over his burn scars. He jerks in sudden alarm, and Ian freezes.

“Oh shit, did I…?”

“No, no, it’s not you, I just... fuck, give me a second.” But Mickey’s mind is far too unravelled for delicate magic like glamor. “Shit,” he breathes. “My fuckin’ scars.”

“Oh.” Ian huffs a soft laugh, then moves his hand and holds it in front of Mickey’s face so he can see the thickly-scarred palm, and the calluses on the pads of his fingers. “I can’t even feel them,” he confesses.

Mickey still feels tense, but that statement unravels the knot of defensiveness in his stomach. He relaxes into the bed again, and Ian lowers his mouth to kiss Mickey’s unmarked shoulder. Then he pulls out slowly, almost all the way out, before shoving in hard again, forcing a shocked cry of pleasure from Mickey.

A hundred-year sex life can be difficult to remember in detail, so Mickey’s isn’t really sure if this is the best fuck of his life, as Ian had promised. It’s pretty fucking great, though. Ian has a keen awareness of Mickey’s pleasure-pain threshold and fucks him confidently, managing to hit all the right spots without hurting too much. He works his hand underneath them and wraps it around Mickey’s cock in a tight grip that’s perfect for thrusting into. He finds the angle that produces the most desperate sounds from Mickey and focuses on that, fucking him with careful, almost mechanical precision and then… and then…

It’s like turning a corner in a labyrinth and seeing daylight streaming through the exit. Mickey tugs at his own hair in sudden desperation and excitement, chasing that completion.

“Oh fuck!” he exclaims urgently. “There, right there, but faster, OK? Faster, faster, fuck…”

Ian takes hold of his hips to keep the same angle of penetration and then follows orders, not changing his technique but picking up speed until he’s slamming in rapidly, their bodies making an obscene slapping sound every time they connect.

“I’m gonna…” Mickey groans.

“Can I finish inside you?” Ian begs, his voice cracking.

“Oh fuck, yes, yes, do it, _shit_ …” And with that thought Mickey’s done, Ian fucking him through it, the sensations flooding his whole body with warmth and curling his toes. He soaks Ian’s hand and Ian rubs the slick warmth of it back over his cock. Mickey is just starting to wince from over-stimulation when Ian pushes in deep and moves his hips in tiny thrusts, his voice high and thin as he gasps for air.

The comedown is almost as intense as the orgasm - Mickey’s stomach muscles twitching with aftershocks as Ian pulses his hips forward and groans, apparently still coming. Eventually he settles his weight down onto Mickey’s back and lets out a long, heavy sigh of satisfaction.

Thankfully, Ian isn’t a big pillow talker. He passes out not long after that, and Mickey gladly joins him. When he wakes up, the sunrise has turned to sunset and Ian is lying behind him, his arm draped loosely around Mickey’s waist.

Mickey carefully removes the arm, and Ian rolls over onto his back without waking up. Before he can forget again, Mickey casts the glamor spell over his scars, covering up the ugly, twisted flesh. Then he pulls on his clothes, pads downstairs, and starts gathering up the pieces he’ll need - a sturdy piece of driftwood fished from the river, red clay, raven feathers, several small gems, and a lock of his own hair.

Ian emerges a few hours later, yawning sleepily and rubbing his sticking-up hair. Mickey starts a little, tries to hide what he’s working on, but Ian’s already seen it.

“The fuck is that?” he demands, in the kind of voice that people use when they’re reaching for a weapon.

“It’s not like the last one,” Mickey explains hurriedly, spinning the tommy bar on the clamp to release the thumb-sized wooden amulet. “It’s not even… you don’t have to wear it. You don’t have to accept it, if you don’t want. You can throw it straight in the river.”

Ian crosses the room and plucks the amulet gingerly from Mickey’s fingers, peering at it suspiciously. “What does it do?”

“You can put this one on, take it off… whatever. It’s not binding. But if you do wear it, for as long as you’re wearing it, we’ll be connected.” He scrubs a hand down his face, feeling how hot and embarrassed he is. “Look, I just wanted you to have it. So you know where I stand.”

Ian weighs the amulet in his hand, looking down at it. He doesn’t put it on, but he doesn’t throw it away either. He slips it into his pocket, and then leans down and kisses the top of Mickey’s head, resting a hand on his neck for a few moments.

“I’ll feed the animals,” he says matter-of-factly as he straightens up. “Make us some food, I’m starving.”

He heads out of the house, his gait loose and relaxed. Mickey watches him go, then reaches up and touches the place on his head where Ian kissed him. A smile comes unbidden to his face. Then he gets up, and starts preparing dinner.


	15. Chapter 15

_Five years later..._

_-_

“He’s here.”

The mayor squares his shoulders and huffs a breath through his mustache, trying to get himself in the right mindset to negotiate. To be honest, they’ve never had to hire a monster-hunter before and he’s a little nervous - a feeling that’s only compounded when the man walks through the door to the town hall wrapped in blood-stained furs and bristling with weapons.

The scattered handful of townsfolk who have also gathered give the monster-hunter a wide berth as he approaches the long bench and sits down opposite the mayor. Even his hair seems to be soaked in blood; it’s a bizarre reddish-orange hue, unlike anything that anyone in the town has seen before.

“So,” the man says, staring across the table with an expression that’s simultaneously intense and bored. “I hear you’ve got a pest problem.”

The mayor nods, doing his best to look businesslike. “We started expanding the western edge of the town a few months ago, for the new brewery. But then men started disappearing. And a few days later, we’d find the bones…”

“How many harpies in the nest?”

“Erm, well, we think it’s just three,” the mayor explains, a little flustered by having his carefully-rehearsed explanation derailed.

“I’ll take the job. My price is three hundred. Half up front, the other half when I bring you their heads.”

“I… well, alright.”

The monster-hunter raises an eyebrow laconically.

“Oh, right, I’ll just…”

The mayor hurries over to the town coffer and unlocks it with the large key on the chain around his neck. He carefully counts out a hundred and fifty pieces into a leather coin purse. When he returns and hands the bag over, the monster-hunter weighs it carefully in his hand, as though he can count the coins in it just by holding it. Perhaps he can.

Standing up, the man says, “I’ll be back in three days, with three heads, to pick up the rest of the money.”

“Ah, well, thank you, I look forward to…” The mayor stammers, but the monster-hunter is already standing up and walking out, tying the coin purse to his belt as he goes. The mayor lets out a sigh of relief, then wanders off to find a servant to yell at.

* * *

Ian lies on his stomach on a ridge overlooking the harpies’ nest. It’s littered with the bones and entrails of their prey, and the creatures are scuttling around, flexing their wings and occasionally squawking at one another in their strange language.

As Ian watches them, he hears footsteps approaching behind him, and a shadow falls over him. Then there’s the dip of a body lying down in the grass next to him.

“The mayor said there’s three, but I only see two,” Ian murmurs, frowning.

“One of them’s out hunting,” Mickey explains.

“Should we capture that one separately? Divide and conquer?”

“Nah, it’ll be too alert when it’s on its own. Easier for me to cast a spell on the nest to catch ‘em while they’re sleeping. We’ll just wait for the other one to get back.”

Ian hums in assent, and finally turns his head to look at Mickey with a sly smile. “How should we kill time until then?”

Mickey rolls his eyes, but he grins and lets Ian turn him over onto his back, clamber on top of him and settle between his legs. Ian brushes Mickey’s hair back from his forehead, dips down and drops a slow, languid kiss onto the witch’s mouth, grazing his tongue lightly over Mickey’s bottom lip. As he does so, gravity drags the amulet out of his shirt to dangle between them, resting in the dip of Mickey’s collarbone.

They don’t go any further than kissing - both of them are too smart to try and fuck in unfamiliar woods, just a hundred feet from a harpy nest. But Ian still loses track of time, brushing his fingers over Mickey’s warm skin, tasting his mouth, resting on the firm lines of his body.

It hasn’t been a smooth ride, these past few years. Ian still hasn’t managed to completely vanquish that hard knot of resentment deep down inside him, planted when Mickey kept him prisoner for a year. There have been arguments and full-blown fights, and separations followed by passionate reunions that broke several bits of furniture in Mickey’s house. But things seem to have settled down lately and Ian is, for lack of a better word, happy. He’s even gotten back to doing what he did best.

Well, sort of.

Their kissing is interrupted by a new shadow falling over both of them. Ian glances over his shoulder and sees the missing harpy perched on an overhanging tree branch, peering down at them with her cold, beady eyes.

Mickey sighs. “Divide and conquer it is.”

* * *

Between them, Ian and Mickey end up with two black eyes, an assortment of scratches, four bruised ribs and one set of deep claw marks. The latter belongs to Ian, and when they finally get back home he sits on the kitchen table with his shirt off, wincing as Mickey rubs salve into the gouges.

“I miss the days when I could have just cut their fuckin’ heads off,” Ian grumbles, earning a disapproving look from Mickey.

The harpies have been moved to a new nest in a hilly area of Mickey’s forest. In a few hours they’ll be waking up and starting to stake out a new territory for themselves. Meanwhile, the reward money has been added to the coffer in the basement. For some reason, Ian's clients never want to look too closely at the hunting trophies he brings back, which makes it all too easy to produce fakes - especially with a little help from Mickey.

Land ownership - not just of farmland or houses, but of the wild areas too - is becoming increasingly popular, and their plan is to buy up the forest and preserve it as a haven for all the magical creatures that are being driven out of their existing homes. Mickey bristled at the idea of having to buy the forest that’s been his home for more than a century, but eventually Ian convinced him of the practicality of it.

No, Ian still doesn’t really like monsters. But he likes Mickey, and that’s enough.

Once his wounded side is carefully wrapped in bandages, Ian eases himself off the table and lies down by the fire while Mickey makes them a hot stew. There’s no meat in it; though Mickey finally relented and allowed Ian to hunt rabbits and birds in the forest, he draws the line at actually cooking or eating any of the animals himself. Still, he’s a decent enough cook and the stew tastes like heaven after a long day of hard work.

Ian tries to sneak up to bed after he’s done eating, but Mickey catches him at the stairs and turns him around.

“Oh no, you son of a bitch, I don’t care if you’re fuckin’ injured. It’s your turn to wash the dishes.”

Ian scowls, and his voice takes on a sharp edge as he says, “What am I, your slave?”

Mickey stiffens instinctively, but then he looks up at Ian’s face and catches the tell-tale curve of a suppressed smile at the corners of his mouth. And despite himself, he grins back.

“You’re a fucking dick.”


End file.
